Xbox 360 Test Unit

I wanted to share a few of my rarer gaming things. This is one that was an unexpected find.
It’s an Xbox 360 Test Unit. What is that? It’s a development kit used for the Xbox 360 that allows developers to test games currently in development. Unlike other models of the development units, Test Units were mostly used for press and media events to show off games that are near completion, or ready for release. They look like units that were sold at retail, but they don’t run retail software.

This one in particular is a Jasper unit, it is one of the last models of the original Xbox 360 design, and it’s black, which seems to be rare for test units, on both conditions. Where did this come from? It has a “Property of Activision” sticker on it, and contained save data for Call of Duty: Black Ops from a few days before the game’s release. It seems to be identical to save data from the final retail version, so it was probably used for some kind of event at Activision before release.

Playing around with it, I had downloaded and burned discs for several XDK releases, or specifically the firmware files to install the Dashboard onto it. The development units usually start with an application called XShell, which is where developers can boot and test their games, but a standard Dashboard is also included, mostly to test that whatever game is being tested looks good within. retail environment, and functions with the retail dashboard – which is important to note. Unlike development Dashboards, there’s no “Shutdown Dash” button in settings. This is meant to look like a retail unit after all, just in case someone were to snoop around, they wouldn’t easily find the development tools.

Being a development unit though, it allows for the installation of nearly every dashboard version, including the fan favorite – and really nice looking – Blades. I wasn’t brave enough to test the earliest dashboard versions, but a later version of the Blades dash worked incredibly well, and was fun to play with. My original Xbox 360, purchased way back in 2009 had been on this Dashboard revision, but the first time I booted it up and went online, it promptly downloaded the “New Xbox Experience,” which completely changed how the system looked and worked.

What’s this though? Something seems to be running? That would be a prototype version of Sonic Unleashed, which I had copied to a DVD to play around with. Again, this unit does not load normal retail games that you’d purchase out at a GameStop or Walmart, this unit only works with games that are currently in development, and this is one that counts. I played around with some of the debug features, including the Gindows operating environment, and had a bit of fun learning about this game’s origins.

But for now, back to a more modern dashboard, and time to find other development goodies to play with.

But what if I connect it to the internet after the Marketplace closure, what would it look like?! Well, you can’t. Development Xbox units don’t connect to the standard Xbox Live, they connect to a service called Partnernet, which I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about. This service has been closed down for a few years now, so attempting to connect it to the internet won’t do anything, sadly.

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