Microsoft's first Xbox console hasn't been made or supported for years. However, it is the subject of a YouTube video from an aspiring TV commercial director that's getting a lot of views and attention thanks to how it dramatized the story of an original Xbox gamer.
According to AdWeek, the project began with a YouTube comment from a person who recently found his original Xbox. The user claims he played games with his father on the console many years ago. Unfortunately, his father died when he was six and because of that, his son had not played on the Xbox for 10 years.
The YouTube poster wrote that he put a game, the Microsoft-published RalliSport Challenge, into the old Xbox. He says he found a "ghost" car still stored in the game. The "ghost" was created by his father in a time race for the fastest time on the track. Yes, his son got a chance to race with his father's "ghost" car 10 years after his death.
John Wikstrom, a 25-year old aspiring director, read that post and decided to dramatize it into a video using the YouTube commentor's own words in the background. Since uploading the completed video on YouTube and Vimeo, it has been generating more and more views and gaining lots of outside attention:
And what about Microsoft? The young director said he's heard from "someone high up" at the software giant, who wrote him personally to praise his work, but nothing official from HQ. Adweek contacted Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's head of Xbox's game marketing, who told us. "This is really inspiring. Connecting players through gaming is one of the best rewards of creating video games, and stories like this are always touching and inspire us to do our best work. We applaud this fan's courage in sharing his story and the filmmaker's artistry in bringing it to life so vividly."
The YouTube commentor has not made himself public, but he did reach out personally to Wikstrom to thank him for his video.
