More Images (4) »

Around 20 minutes before MTV aired the The Next-Generation Xbox Revealed special, a funny thing happened over at the alternate-reality game/marketing campaign Ourcolony.net. Suddenly, the dark gray home page that had greeted visitors with a request for a password and a blobby rotating image disappeared. In its place was a new light gray home page with a fixed circular image. A few moments after loading the page, links bearing the words "high" and "low" appeared.

Xbox 360 Promo

Surprise! That Ourcolony.net ARG was just a marketing campaign!

• Watch
• Download

Click on one of those two words, and you will begin downloading a zipped .wmv--a video that begins with a computer animation of a silver version of the iconic Ourcolony.net ant walking across the ground. Suddenly the ant encounters a shoe and stops. The camera pans up and, lo and behold--it's J Allard, Microsoft corporate vice president, who promptly says, "Welcome to Xbox 360."

Though meant to be surprising, the revelation that Ourcolony.net is a marketing tool for Microsoft isn't a revelation at all. At this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Allard displayed a slide showing himself wearing a T-shirt with the site's ant emblem on it. And now that the curtain has been pulled back, so to speak, Allard was more than happy to use the forum to talk about his company's new console, which is fully outlined in GameSpot's special feature Xbox 360: Inside and Out.

However, the video did contain some footage that Microsoft didn't want the public to see. Namely, the several shots of current-generation Xbox games--including MX vs. ATV Unleashed and Halo 2--being played on the Xbox 360, which means that, at least in the testing stage, it is backward compatible. There is also a screenshot of the new Xbox Live dashboard with the words "Xbox 1 Zone" clearly marked and an icon of the current Xbox title Fable. Finally, a screenshot of the forthcoming Xbox Live Marketplace clearly shows Halo 2 maps being offered for download.

However, while such shots imply backward compatibility, such functionality is not yet official. Microsoft executives have said themselves they cannot address the issue until next Monday's media event at E3--at the earliest.

The Ourcolony.net video also shows what the button at the center of the 360's controller is for. "The 360 button is how you get to the UI, how you get to the software," says Jonathan Hayes, the manager of platform experience design for Xbox, as he rubs the globular silver button, which is surrounded by the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Besides the shenanigans at Ourcolony.net, Thursday evening also saw the launch of Xbox360.com, the next-gen console's official site. Keeping in tune with the console's previously announced worldwide launch this coming holiday season, the site has sections for every region of the globe. While spartan, the site shows additional 360-degree-view pictures of the console and lets visitors sign up for further information. Last, but not least, the regional subsections load with a brief Flash animation of the console's start-up screen, which shows the globular Xbox 360 logo drop into the middle of the screen, creating a ripple effect.