The Secret Code of New Consoles

From the Atari 2600 to the next Xbox, find out what your favorite consoles were called...before anyone knew they existed.

Console makers have adopted the military habit of giving their upcoming consoles cool, secret code-names, both to obscure their specific details from competitors and to make sure that some mystique surrounds the project, should rumors spread.

Microsoft is only the latest to employ this device, with its Xbox 720, aka 'Durango'. The secret code of new consoles goes way, way back.


The Atari 2600 became a cultural phenomenon when it was released in 1977, but while it was in development the console went by the code name 'Stella,' taken from the pet name one of the engineers had for his bicycle. The machine had been in development since 1973 as an attempt to capitalize on the arcade success of Pong, yet the technical challenges of creating something both cheap enough and small enough for households were immense. A year before it launched, Channel F launched the Video Entertainment System that threatened to take over the home console market. When Stella was finally ready to shed its codename Atari first called it the Video Computer System as a way of competing with the VES. It was not actually until 1982 that Atari rebranded the console as the Atari 2600.

Mark V

By the late 1980s Nintendo had come to dominate the home console space. Sega found it difficult to compete against the NES with its less powerful Master System. When it began planning a follow-up Sega settled on the fast and powerful sounding codename 'Mark V.' Sega wanted to amaze players with an advanced new alternative to the NES, making Nintendo's aging machine seem dinky and outdated in comparison. The spirit of the code name was held over with the final name, 'Mega Drive,' meant to imply power and speed. The name was set for Japan and Europe, but Sega had to change the console's name for North America because someone else owned the trademark for 'Mega Drive.' They went with the mystical-sounding, but no-less epic, 'Genesis,' powered by 'Blast' processing. It sounded like either the Big Bang or a rocket about to lift off. And it worked.


The irony of the PlayStation's brand is that it was originally developed as an add-on for the NES, and later moved to the Super Nintendo. A day after they revealed its partnership with Sony on the disc-drive attachment at the 1992 Consumer Electronics Show, Nintendo announced that it had made a deal with Phillips to build the peripheral and was ditching Sony. Infuriated Sony took their technology and the PlayStation name and decided to release it as a competitor to Nintendo. The original prototypes were codenamed PS-X, for PlayStation Experimental. In 1994 the company dropped the "experimental" tag and released the console simply as the PlayStation.

Project Reality

The transition from 2D to 3D was a huge one for video game consoles. Nintendo expected its SNES successor to usher in that shift in epic style. The original codename for their third home console was thus given the portentous moniker 'Project Reality.' The result of a collaboration between Nintendo and Silicon Graphics, Project Reality was supposed to rival the most powerful PCs of the day with its ability to render polygonal 3D worlds. In addition to a main processor, the console had a second processor called the 'Reality Co-Processor' to help manage the large number of computations needed to bring the visuals to life. When it came time to shed the Reality codename, Nintendo chose to go with the simple but conservative Nintendo 64 name, meant to impress with its four-fold improvement on the SNES's 16-bit processor.


Like the NES, the Game Boy revolutionized the handheld category that had previously been defined by simple LCD games. For its successor, a 32-bit machine meant to be significantly more powerful than the SNES, Nintendo chose the name 'Atlantis.' In hindsight the code name doesn't seem to reflect anything specific about the handheld. Instead it's simply a reflection of the mythic allure that a follow-up to the most popular handhelds of all time had for most players. When it was finally released in 2001 Nintendo split the difference between its charmless N64 nomenclature and the hyperbolic Atlantis by calling it Game Boy Advance, not a perfect title but mercifully better than Game Boy 32.


After successfully beating Nintendo to the technological punch with the Genesis, Sega became a mess of constant hardware tinkering that led the company from the SEGA CD, SEGA 32X, and the Saturn between 1992 and 1995. Continuing this sporadic tradition, development on the Saturn successor went through a fragmented process resulting in several different code names. Development began in 1997 when two different engineering groups at Sega were put in competition with each other to come up with a next generation design. Each teams works were given a strange array of code names: 'White Belt,' 'Guppy,' 'Black Belt,' 'Shark,' 'Dural' (after the Virtua Fighter character) and the widely reported 'Katana.' When it was finally released in 1999 it's perhaps understandable that Sega abandoned all its old console brand names and made yet another fresh start by going with Dreamcast.


When Nintendo began working on a Nintendo 64 successor it was becoming clear that Sony had taken over the world. Knowing that a PlayStation 2 would surely be on the way, Nintendo wanted to create a powerful console that would also be easier to develop for than the challenging N64 design. The project was originally code named 'Dolphin' after the internal model number DOL-001. The machine's custom-designed graphics processor was given the name 'Flipper,' after the televised dolphin hero, which seemed friendly enough but didn't imply any special technical advancement. For the final name, Nintendo picked "GameCube" to accentuate the console's square case.


After two flat launches of home consoles, Nintendo's President Hiroshi Yamauchi began thinking about ways Nintendo could re-establish itself as a market leader. Yamauchi wanted to make game devices that could be sold to anyone, not just the stereotypical 18-24 year-old male. The Nintendo DS was the first fruit of this attempt, an updated handheld with two screens, touch controls, and an on-board microphone that Yamauchi hoped would appeal to non-traditional players. The DS stood for Developer's System initially, but midway through development the name was changed to 'Nitro' after the model number NTR-001. After a French website discovered a portion of Nintendo's developer website titled Nitro, speculation about a Game Boy Advance successor spread and Nintendo reverted to the DS name, though this time standing for "Dual Screen." The name stuck and when it was released in 2004, the DS became the cornerstone of Nintendo's mass-market strategy for the rest of the decade.


Microsoft chose to keep the development codename for its original Xbox, but with its successor the company used a code name based on the new machine's chipset, 'Xenon.' The chipset was produced by IBM and was similar to the G5 processors IBM was producing for Apple's Mac computers. Indeed, early development kits were modified G5 Power Macs and for a period of time Microsoft was the single biggest buyer of Power Macs in the world. When it was finally released in 2005, the name was changed to Xbox 360, a way of shaking the dust off the Xbox name and amplifying the brand as the first console to break into the high-definition, fully online world of gameplay.


Like the DS, the follow-up to the GameCube was intended to reach non-traditional gamers. When development began the Wii was called 'Revolution,' a sign of just how fundamentally Nintendo was rethinking its strategy. Instead of focusing on powerful processors, Nintendo focused development around a new kind of controller that wouldn't overwhelm new players with buttons and analog sticks. It was decided that the controller would be a candy bar-sized remote controller with an accelerometer for motion controls and an infrared camera that would work as a pointer when aimed at the television. The Revolution codename initially excited long-time Nintendo fans with its explosive promise but just before E3 in 2006 Nintendo revealed the final name would be 'Wii.' It was meant to sound like the all-inclusive 'we,' but soon became a urine joke for the disillusioned fans who had been expecting something powerful and explosive. None of which stopped the Wii from vindicating Nintendo's mass-market strategy becoming one of the best-selling home consoles of all time.

Project Natal

The success of the Wii caught many in the industry by surprise and left both Microsoft and Sony trying to incorporate motion controls into the PS3 and 360. After experimenting with several ideas, Microsoft chose an elaborate 3D camera with on-board mic to be the standard-bearer of its motion controlled future. When it was first revealed in tech-demo form at 2009's E3, Microsoft used the code name 'Project Natal,' named after the Brazilian town where project-lead Alex Kipman had been born. Natal also means 'birth' in Spanish, a word that was both exotic sounding and promised a whole new beginning for the aging 360. A year later, Microsoft settled on the final name of Kinect, following Nintendo's styleguide with a nonsense word that sounded like a cross between 'connect' and 'kinetic.' The choice again provoked groans from the Xbox faithful, but, like Wii before it, Kinect made sense to consumers selling 8 million units in its first two months and has sold more than 18 million units total.


Rumors of Sony's successor to PSP were doing the rounds way before any real facts emerged and so, inevitably it became known as PSP2. Throughout 2010, industry execs and Sony chiefs talked about the device without giving it any especially exotic name. At a meeting between Sony and its partners in January 2011, the new device was unveiled as 'Next Generation Portable', or 'NGP', a dull name but no more so than PSP (PlayStation Portable), and certainly descriptive. But the marketing folks weighed in, and by E3 that year, we had a final name, 'Vita', meaning 'Life'. As always, the new name was met with derision – some felt it sounded like a healthy eating plan – but these objections were soon forgotten.

Project Cafe, Durango and PlayStation 4

The next wave of home consoles are beginning to come into view. Nintendo has already announced its Wii-successor the WiiU, which was rumored to have gone by the code name 'Project Cafe,' though reasons for that name remain unclear. A PlayStation successor has been mentioned in rumors but it has so far been referred to as just the PlayStation 4. The Xbox 360 successor also seems to be under development and some rumors have suggested its code name is 'Durango.' What this could mean is still unclear--Durango is one of the 31 states of Mexico, a city in Colorado, a town in Spain, an Italian racing team, the name of a class of ship in the Mexican Navy, and a kind of SUV made by Dodge. At this point we can only guess, and that, finally, is the whole point.

Michael Thomsen is a writer in New York. His work has appeared in Slate, ABC World News, The Believer, The Daily Beast, Kill Screen, Gamasutra, The New Inquiry, Edge, and Billboard.

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