This page aims to collect all the information that is known about the Xbox 260 development hardware, if you know of anything missing please let us know!
By development kit hardware we mean any non-retail Xbox 360 hardware that was either used officially by Microsoft or by licensed third party game studios.
The AssemblerGames user Lehvak Kal has an excellent chart for the different board IDs for the Phat xbox development consoles available below:
The first development kits for the 360 available were created before the final Xbox retail hardware had been finalised as as such it has a few differences and is considerably weaker than what became the retail unit. There were two Alpha development kits before they moved on to the Beta versions.
XeDK stands for Xenon Development Kit since Xenon was the name of the first Xbox 360 Motherboard.
The image on the left shows a rather large delivery of PowerMac G5s that was delivered to Microsoft! This photo was taken by Michael Hanscom who was a contractor working for the MSCopy print Shop at the time (He was fired for posting this photo to his blog) 1.
But why would Microsoft buy so many of their competitors flagship product? Well to turn them into Xbox 360 development kits of course!
The Powermac G5 was an ideal candidate for an early Xbox 360 development kit as it uses the same PowerPC chip destined for the Xbox 360, when fitted with the ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (ATI R300 2) (128MB) graphics card it turned it from a Mac into a Xbox 360 Alpha 1 XeDK.
These were used by only the earliest of 360 game developers and were used between October 2003 and some time in Autumn 2004 3.
These development kits used the Original Xbox controllers with a USB connector soldered on to the end instead of the normal xbox connector 4.
While the image on the left might look like a standard Apple PowerMac G5 with an Xbox controller on top, however it is actually the Xbox 360 Alpha 2 Development Kit!
The CPU for this unit was only dual core 2GHz compared to the retail units three cores clocked at 3.2GHz.
These were used at E3 2005 to showcase the upcoming Xbox 360 games 5.
The difference between Alpha 1 and 2 is that Microsoft upgraded the graphics card from ATI R300 to ATI R420 2.
One very interesting fact about this unit is that it came with an early build of the Fusion Emulator which played original Xbox games on the 360!
Sometime during late 2004 and early 2005 Microsoft started sending out the Beta versions of the development kit hardware, which were much closer to what would become the retail hardware than the Alpha Units.
Note that the labels Beta 1 and Beta 2 were given by the community and not their official titles inside Microsoft.
The first Beta development kit wasn’t shipped for very long before it got replaced by its second generation, this makes it much harder to find. The Kit looks like a standard Xbox 360 with a hat on. That hat is known as a sidecar and it is where most of the interesting development hardware is located.
The development hardware board in the first Beta is called the Titan Kernel debugging board and it comes with Krypton prototype controllers 3.
One major difference between this one and version 2 is that it can only play XEX1 format executables and thus is very limited in what it can play as most 360 games and application are in XEX2 format 3.
The second Beta version was very similar to the first however it has the huge advantage in that it can play XEX2 format games, this makes it much more appealing to purchase today to play prototype games on.
There were multiple motherboard variations of the final development kits, to match the retail Xbox 360 which had the same motherboards:
This was the standard Xbox 360 Development kit and was available with either a Xenon, Zephyr, or Jasper Motherboard.
Announced at the Game Developers Conference from 2009 the XNA “tribal” blue version is probably the most attractive of all the development kits, equipped with double the RAM of the standard XDK (from 512MB to 1GB) it even has a custom blue ring on the power button:
The first variant of these kits are known as the Expo edition and contail the XNA Logo on the faceplate (under the power button).
Video of it in action:
The Sidecar for the Xbox 360 S Development kit is optional, and when not present it is a Test Kit instead 8, which is an efficient way to produce both test and development kits, and allows game studios to upgrade test kits when needed. Some units are dated from 2011.
The official PR statement from Microsoft states:
Microsoft has released a brand new Xbox Development Kit that is designed to increase efficiency and reduce cost for Xbox 360 development teams of all sizes. It will feature additional RAM for development purposes, built-in flash memory, larger hard disk drives and a smaller form factor at a significantly reduced price from its predecessor.
The new XDK console gives developers the option to license a Sidecar attachment that enables debugging and disc emulation. Not all members of a development team need these capabilities, so this new Sidecar option offers greater flexibility for studios. The Sidecar can be shared among multiple XDK consoles, removing the need to license additional higher cost debugging consoles. These changes will reduce the overall price to create, test, debug, and release an Xbox 360 or Xbox LIVE Arcade game.
With the sidecar it became a full development kit:
Here are photos of the Sidecar on its own:
The Test Kits are green rather than blue.
The test kits can be distinguised from the development kits by their color, they are white and the PIX port is covered (since it is used for debugging).
The green version of the XNA Tribal Development Kit is a Test Kit, the ring glows green instead of the develompent blue and it doesn’t contain the PIX port at all.
The first variant of these kits are known as the Expo edition and contail the XNA Logo on the faceplate (under the power button):
This Test kit doesn’t contain the XNA Tribal branding and the sidecar is just plain chrome green.
Xbox 360 Stress Kits were used to test the hardware under stress, changing voltage, temperature and other factors to see how well the hardware would perform. Note that Stress kits can be prototype. But, not all stress kits are prototypes! 2.
Thanks to ICollectBro on Reddit we have an image of what the Zephyr stress kit looks like:
In the video below XboxSurgeon shows off a prototype version of the slim Xbox 360 stress testing console, including a prototype hard drive:
SSK or Sentinel Stress kits are used for XGD2 (Xbox Game Disc 2) Testing.
