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5 extremely rare special-edition consoles fit for presidents and queens
Earlier this week, GamesBeat reported on the $10,000 Xbox One that London retailer Harrods has for sale. This one-of-a-kind Xbox One is a bit different from the one you might own because it’s covered in real-gold plating … although I probably shouldn’t assume that you didn’t have your jeweler cover your Xbox One or PlayStation 4 in gold as well.
This extremely rare and expensive console got us thinking about some of the other rich-people systems in gaming history. We quickly found that the Xbox One wasn’t the first piece of gaming hardware covered with gold and that gaming companies sure do love giving expensive things to people with a ton of money.
During the 2007 NBA All-Star weekend, Sony hosted a suite where it gave away a small handful of its PlayStation 3 consoles to celebrities. If you were famous, you could potentially get a rare silver PS3 like this one that has basketball players etched into the top.
Sony handed out at least seven during this event. All of them featured different custom art.
In 2007, Sony also handed out PlayStation 3s to celebrities during the National Football League’s Super Bowl.
Again, every PS3 Sony handed out at the Super Bowl featured custom art work, which effectively makes each one as limited as “limited edition” can get.
In the early days of the Xbox 360, Bill Gates wanted to hand out the shiny new console as gifts to powerful friends. The Microsoft founder asked Korean artist Kim Young-jun to create a one-of-a-kind design for the console, and he produced the mother of pearl art you see in the picture (that’s Young-jun in the photo).
The company ended up producing 100 of these Xbox 360s, and Bill Gates handed the first one to then South Korean president Lee Myung-bak.
In 2009, publisher THQ was looking to get some press for its Big Family Games minigame collection for the Nintendo Wii. Someone at the company came up with the idea of sending a Wii and a copy of the title to … the Queen of England.
Naturally, THQ didn’t want to send her a standard-issue white Wii that the common folk use.
OK, so this Taco Bell-themed Xbox 360 wasn’t commissioned for a president or a gift for royalty. No, Taco Bell handed out only around three of these as part of a contest.
That said, doesn’t Taco Bell’s “Live Más” slogan really mean that we are all willing to run for the border? Isn’t it saying that every person is their own king?
