The CES hardware reveal took place in January, 2001, and the name “Xbox” was now a permanent fixture for the November launch. Finalising the console’s public identity, though, had not been an easy process.
“At first we called it the Windows Entertainment Platform, or WEP, and then we came up with a codename for it,” said Bachus. “We called it Project Midway. That was because, candidly, the Battle of Midway was the turning point in the battle with the Japanese [in World War II], where, through deception, we were able to fool the Japanese into thinking something was actually another. But we had to have a cover story for it, so we said it was ‘midway’ between a PC and a console.
“But we started referring to the hardware internally as the DirectX team’s box, or the DirectX box. It just got shortened to Xbox, although we could never figure out if it was X-Box, or whether or not it had a capital ‘b’ or a lower case ‘b’. But that was always the codename, and we figured marketing people would come in and come up with something snazzy for it later.
“We had this very expensive naming company that comes up with all kinds of names. They asked us things like, ‘If Xbox was a car, what type of car would it be?’ J Allard came up with the predictable, ‘It’d be a Ferrari.’
“They came back with a bunch of names that I thought were ridiculous. Most of them sounded like car names, like the Atlanta, the Altera; things that sounds good from a sonic standpoint. And they were like, ‘No, we don’t like those names either. We were just gauging your reaction to them. I was like, ‘Right.’
“Ultimately they came back and said, ‘We’ve found the name. This is the name. It tests great. We’ve tested it against Xbox and we think it’s fantastic. OK. Here it is: it’s the Microsoft 11X. It’s not 10. It goes to 11. And “X” is mystery. And it tests great. Everyone loves it.’
“And I turned to our marketing guy and he turned to me, and we said, ‘Well, I guess we’d better go buy Xbox.com.’”
Bachus conceded that Xbox ended up as the machine’s name “mostly because we couldn’t think of anything better. It was just as simple as that.”
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