Xbox One design is version 76

In a post over on the Microsoft website, Xbox One’s designer Carl Ledbetter has discussed what the team went through to deliver the Xbox One we see today.

Ledbetter has been with Microsoft since 1995, and over the years has worked on dozens of projects and logged nearly 200 patents.

Among his designs are mice, keyboards, trackballs, gaming devices, laptops, Zune, Kinect, and Xbox 360 – an in 2010, design of the Xbox One began.

“There was this conundrum in that we had to meet and satisfy desires of core gamers and Xbox fans, and at same time we wanted Xbox to reach out and mean something to new people. From a design perspective, how do we make that happen? That was a big challenge,” said Ledbetter.

By the end of the process they had sketched, designed, and 3D printed 75 consoles, 100 Kinects, and more than 200 controllers.

Xbox One – pile o’ prototypes

“We were extremely thorough. We were trying to push boundaries, to do something new and inventive, but there was so much at stake that we had to be really careful as well. The reason why there was so much at stake is that people really, really care about Xbox,” said Ledbetter.

“We wanted to take every component of what people love about Xbox and amplify it, but also make it disappear into the living room – to stay in the background, robust and reliable.

Speaking about the controller, Ledbetter said “There was never a direct ask for us to make it better. People were a little apprehensive, like, ‘We have a great controller. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.'”

“We had more than 1,000 pairs of hands testing controllers throughout the course of design evaluations to make sure the triggers felt right, the overall form felt right and that people could use the new controller in a way that was as good as or better than the old. We crafted every last detail,” Ledbetter said.

“We put a lot of time into all of the details. The overall product is really premium. It really feels designed, engineered and crafted in quality,” said Ledbetter.