By SN
Friday February 12, 2010
Wired via the
Consumerist:
Roger Smith, chief technology officer for PEO STRI, the Army command responsible for purchasing training equipment, claims that Microsoft refused to sell him the consoles. Smith told me that he discussed acquiring the Xbox with Microsoft representatives at a trade show back in 2006. According to Smith, the Microsoft executives said they would neither sell the Xbox 360 nor license XNA game development tools to the Army for three reasons:
* Microsoft was afraid that the military would buy up lots of Xbox 360s, but would buy only one game for each of them, so MS wouldn’t make much money off of the games.
* A big military purchase could create a shortage of Xbox 360s.
* If the Xbox became an Army training device, it could taint its reputation. Microsoft was concerned that “do we want the Xbox 360 to be seen as having the flavor of a weapon? Do we want Mom and Dad knowing that their kid is buying the same game console as the military trains the SEALs and Rangers on?” Smith told me during an interview for Training & Simulation Journal.
#6 The 360 console has been making a (small) profit for several years now.
I don’t find the games too overpriced, especially if you hold off for a month or so for new releases, and especially compared to the very definitely overpriced PS3 titles.
As for reliability, I can only speak for myself but my 2 consoles have both worked fine since purchase. However, for overseas engagements the consoles would be exposed to extreme conditions that would kill just about any console in a matter of days. They’d be moved about, used in very hot environs, and treated like crap by servicemen.
I wouldn’t want to be responsible for keeping them alive under those circumstances.
So although it sounds pretty dickish, I think MS made the right call. Besides, it was a call made back in 2006 when they WERE making a large loss per console and were yet to deal with the hundreds of millions in losses when some consoles started overheating. In hindsight it was ABSOLUTELY the right call to make.
its too late i have see drones controlled with 360 controllers
#19 KMFIX, mmmm boobies
I wonder game they want to buy? any ideas?
“fMRI-scanned monkeys they had trained to play so-called ‘inspection games’ against computers.”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-theory/#Neuro
We are beyond the planning, development and intelligence gathering phase. We are in the operations phase. No Microsoft and lots of monkeysoft. They work cheap, for a few bananas a day, you get solid results. With Microsoft you get crap. Soldier on and game on. When war stops being fun, terrorists have the edge. The size of the oil barrels don’t change, but the value of money keeps decreasing. I’m projecting oil at $22.00/barrel. These pricks start a jet fuel fire at the Pentagon and now we need more jet fuel to kill them off and we aren’t paying blackmail rates. Watch the Iranian monkeys go bust as they try going nuclear. Send them xboxes to build a command and control system and they can play with themselves. Soccer moms get minivan gas in USA for $1.79 a gallon, so ain’t that a kick in the head? It is politically feasible, especially if you are raisin kids on a military pay grade. I’m not paying for the same real estate twice.
#23 That’s obvious, Call of Duty – Modern Warfare 2!
THat is so lame, why would MS want to expose several hundred or thousand customers to a product? They may not get a ton of sales directly from the Army, but the guys that use it in training and bought their own would have made up for the lack of sales to the Army.