Microsoft has been known in the past to reward its employees with gifts of smartphones, tablets and other devices and now it seems it will be distributing free Xbox One's to the Xbox team that worked on it. And what's more, they will be unique and exclusive white variants.

Reddit user Kinect10DLL posted a picture and details of the "Xbox One Employee Ship Gift" that he claims a friend who works on the Xbox team received. It states that each member of the team will receive a white Xbox One that is "unique to our team", one year of Xbox Live, all "1P games" (the in-house, first-party launch line-up) and  an achievement - and they will get it on launch day.

exclusive white xbox one heading to microsoft employees for free image 2

While some have been sceptical about its validity, others have pointed out many accuracies in the text. First, the font is as used by the new branding. And the stated eligibility of "IEB FTE" is consistent to in-house terminology - it stands for "Interactive Entertainment Business, Full-Time Equivalent".

The console also bears the inscription: "I made this." A nice touch.

What it doesn't reveal  is when the employees will actually get their hands on the next-generation console. Pocket-lint was as Gamescom 2013 in Cologne, Germany, last week and was as surprised as most others that no release date was announced, even though Sony revealed its planned street dates for the PS4 (15 November US, 29 November UK and the rest of Europe).

Read: Top Xbox One game trailers of Gamescom 2013