Id bet this wasnt staged, they just wanted to f with him a little.
Surely he got the xbox afterwards, no parents could be that mean.
Actually something like this happened to me when i was younger.
We were always used to get quite some money from our grandmother,
so one christmas all she gave us was a chocolate egg thingy (dunno if they exist in the USA, its
this).
I wish i couldve seen our faces ^^
But afterwards we opened them and she found a way to open them, put the money in and close them again.