This is one of my favorite anecdotes from early Xbox history. Essentially, the project at the time was rather revolutionary, and would be an incredibly expensive operation for Microsoft to pull off successfully. As such, the crew working on it were afraid that it would be a huge failure, and would lose the company money. They nicknamed the Xbox project 'the Coffin Box' as they thought it might end their careers at Microsoft if it flopped. Thankfully, it was a success!