Back in 2013, Microsoft was developing its own smartwatch and planned to release it under the Xbox brand. However, it ditched the idea and has mostly pulled out of the wearables market since.

Now images have emerged online of one of the scrapped Xbox watch prototypes and it looks more than a little like another, more successful smartwatch out there.

That's no accident. It was allegedly designed based on rumours of Apple's forthcoming Watch.

Sadly, the Xbox watch plans were shelved, but it could have been a worthy rival to Apple's device. Apparently, it was to have a 1.5-inch colour touchscreen, heart rate monitor on the rear - which you can see in the photos - and 6GB of storage.

We're not entirely sure where the Xbox angle comes into it, as there are few mentions of any gaming prowess, but some rumours suggested that it would come with LTE mobile broadband connectivity. Apple has only just introduced that feature to its own wearable range, four years later.

Microsoft did persist with wearables for a bit, most notably with the Surface fitness band, but both the first and second models failed to do the numbers the company had hoped, so it reportedly also scrapped plans to release a third.