Blue Ninja
Member
Nope, but it's just another group of consumers they've lost.
I'd really love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft HQ these days.
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Military personnel on Xbox One; Microsoft responds
- Thread starter RobbieH
- Start date
Nope, but it's just another group of consumers they've lost.
I'd really love to be a fly on the wall at Microsoft HQ these days.
Roland1979
Junior Member
Wow... just... wow.
graywolf323
Member
please be joking
Ploid 3.0
Member
Everywhere. The handheld games are even better. These guys aren't robots, you need entertainment to get you through long days. Imagine living in a world with no books, music, concerts, movies, games, and so on. You'd go crazy, and that's not something that's needed in a remote base.
NullPointer
Member
Why am I not surprised? Oh man.
Stop serving and move to a location that has Xbone support.
Or, Get a 360.
The choice is yours, and powered by the cloud.
Phonomezer
Banned
I have zero familiarity with how military personnel operate overseas. I'm not American and I really don't know, which is why I asked.
Thanks.
No one in your military plays game systems offline? Where are you from?
Why do you play video games (I'm assuming you do since you post on Gaming side of GAF)?
People like to be entertained. People want to unwind after a long day of work. Sometimes a particularly stressful job requires a particularly effective distraction. None of that changes simply because you are a member of the armed forces, regardless of what geographical location you are stationed in.
Also, keep in mind that the majority of the US forces deployed overseas are not in active combat roles. The US has over 100,000 soldiers deployed overseas in more than 150 countries, and very, very few of those are active combat zones. They are standing guard, and that means that their job requires a lot of waiting around. Assuming they are not doing it in a way that distracts them from their job (obviously this would be for off duty use only, their superiors would see to that), why should they not be allowed to entertain themselves.
Edit: I misread your post as asking "why" they are playing video games. The point still stands though.
Peter Bazooka
Banned
I'm not American either but from what I understand having something spun as not supporting the troops is pretty much a kiss of death in the states.
I might be skating the line with my account, but I have never wanted a console to fail so badly in my life and I hope by year 2 every single Microsoft executive that had a hand in this disaster is summarily fired and never works in this industry again, thats including the clowns that walked out on stage at the reveal and at E3 and tried to sell this shit to the gaming public.
The Xbox One is a shameful, dreadful, abhorrent box full of the worst ideas the industry has ever seen and it deserves the same fate as the Atari Jaguar, 32X, and that VR Headset Nintendo tried to sell us a couple of decades ago.
The Xbox One is a shameful, dreadful, abhorrent box full of the worst ideas the industry has ever seen and it deserves the same fate as the Atari Jaguar, 32X, and that VR Headset Nintendo tried to sell us a couple of decades ago.
Roland1979
Junior Member
I'm not American either but I'm social and I can sympathize and empathize.
What do you think, that they are on patrol 12 hours long, every single day?
Phonomezer
Banned
For sure. Do they set up stations of consoles for soldiers or is it all on an individual basis? I'd imagine CoD is pretty popular, lol.
Read EpicSteve's blog posts on Giant Bomb or his Kotaku article.
Games are fundamentally a part of military culture as they provide a cheap and much needed escape from their daily life - in a place where there are very few escapes.
It's an even bigger slap in the face when you consider how much of the 360's success was down to military shooters.
Currently in the USAF. I recently just moved to a New base. With that said, I didn't really know who in my shop was a gamer. The day after the E3 Xbox reveal, I HAD MY ANSWER. People were in disbelief. Most of them were 360 users and they couldn't understand why MS would do this shit.
Now they are converting to PS4. Only one guy is getting a X1, because he really enjoys Kinect.
With that said: to those of you saying why should the military care and "they should be doing 'this' not playing video games"...in the nicest way I can say this: we are like everyone else in the USA. We get free time, we are not ALWAYS fighting/training/prepping/etc. Even in iraq, afghan, africa, south korea, and many other places, you are not jobbing 24/7. We too enjoy our video games after we get off work.
Sorry to go on a rant. Won't happen again. Lets play.
Now they are converting to PS4. Only one guy is getting a X1, because he really enjoys Kinect.
With that said: to those of you saying why should the military care and "they should be doing 'this' not playing video games"...in the nicest way I can say this: we are like everyone else in the USA. We get free time, we are not ALWAYS fighting/training/prepping/etc. Even in iraq, afghan, africa, south korea, and many other places, you are not jobbing 24/7. We too enjoy our video games after we get off work.
Sorry to go on a rant. Won't happen again. Lets play.
Honestly, I expected this from Microsoft. They are very strict on their piracy and used side of things, they absolutely hate it and would do anything to stop that kind of market. I don't see Microsoft changing their way no matter what, they are set on making this an online console with little to no benefits of other online platforms like Steam.
Wouldn't this be a common issue amongst most military around the world?
If you're not in a warzone, your job in the military is like any other job in civilian life. You go in, work your shift, go home, and do pretty much whatever you want in your spare time. Your home may be a tent in the middle of the desert, but they have power generators, where you can watch TV, Skype back home, and yes, play video games.
Oh shit, Don Mattrick has a GAF account!
"Who cares" is not the way to open a question.
Soldiers and civilian military contractors "generally" buy their own machines/games from a wares/goods station.
The more people here in the States that know this, the more sales MS is going to lose. The "support our troops" people are a rather large number.
It's like MS is trying to pull out of the industry.
Well I played my N64 during my six month deployment on a carrier in 1998, Xbox on deployment on a cruiser in 2005, and 360 on three deployments in 2007, 2008, and 2011.
No Internet connection for personal use.
MaximumFlipFlop
Banned
Well they need to stop then lmao
zomgbbqftw
Banned
Just remembered that there are ca. 30k US troops in Korea as well, they will be SOL until late 2014 for Xbone and with region locking a lot of games might not even make it there.
SomethingInTheSea
Member
This is turning into one of those great marketing debacles that'll be textbook fodder for years to come.
Like when coca cola tried to launch Dasani water in the UK and it was only on the market for 5 weeks before they were forced to withdraw it.
Like when coca cola tried to launch Dasani water in the UK and it was only on the market for 5 weeks before they were forced to withdraw it.
If this is suppose to be a joke, I fucking feel bad for you.
NullPointer
Member
For me its not about whether its an American thing or not. Its just another formerly loyal contingent of Xbox gamers being abandoned because they don't fit into the MS DRM vision.
I'd knock it just as much if it was your particular way of gaming getting sidelined while other posters exclaimed "Who cares?"
Roland1979
Junior Member
Is this a joke/trolling? Or are you that ignorant? This cannot be serious. Right?
Please say you're joking to keep my faith in humankind
Roland1979
Junior Member
Originally Posted by Amalthea:
That's such a detached thing to say. Even as a joke this is super disgusting.
That's such a detached thing to say. Even as a joke this is super disgusting.
Freezie KO
Banned
So if Rachel Maddow is against this, does that mean that Fox News is for it by kneejerk reactionary default?
cj_iwakura
Member
I have friends in the military who I constantly play online with.
Via the PS3 that is. And I doubt that console of choice will be changing.
reddmyst
Member
Mass hysteria is apparently hysterical.
Wait till Fox News gets a hold of this story lol
Wow I thought the same thing. Man this isn't going good Microsoft
Roland1979
Junior Member
You're right. So who thinks Sony would use this in their advantage as well? That "tutorial" about sharing games is hilarious. Hard to predict if they make a commercial "just" for military personal, but maybe they'll mention it among other things as well in a clever ad?
Sony sure manages to keep momentum in their favor.
Sony sure manages to keep momentum in their favor.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
I just created #MicrosoftHatesUSTroops. I'm bored as hell.
YES! No breaks, no down time! Work all the time. All day long. If your not eating, shitting or sleeping you should be WORKING!
-_-
The problem is that people don't just buy stuff at their local exchange, we shop off base as well (I'm in the Air Force). For example, I'm stationed in Montana (a state with no sales tax), it's actually better to shop off base then it is on base.
Military members who get deployed usually bring their consoles with them. Even with that said, if I (as an example) were to purchase a XBONE game off of Amazon (which a lot of people do, Amazon ships a lot to APO addresses) when I was deployed, it still would fail the activation.
The only way for MS to make this for military members would be for them to turn everything off and make it like this gen. However, if they do that just for the military, someone will sue them to get it overturned for everyone else (honestly, would love for that to happen).
Karsticles
Member
When you are in the middle of nowhere, you don't have anything to do but what you bring with you. There isn't always "work" to be done. This isn't a 9 to 5 here.
RiddleofSteel
Member
I posted this on day one after they announced this. I did 3 tours in Bosnia and we lived and breathed Xbox. There is no internet connection for you when you are deployed down range. Being deployed is like being in prison. You work long hours every day, workout, watch porn and play Xbox. I couldn't even imagine being deployed without a console, as it's so brutal to begin with, and the Xbox is one of the only things you can use to decompress.
I doubt they'd make a commercial. Would be interesting though. What MS would do, if anything, is implement a card system. A 500 minute no online needed pass. After that they would have to reenter another card. They would prob give them away for free to show "they support the troops". However, (with no wisdom on how the following would or could work) they would prob have to design a program that would already have a finite number of codes loaded into the system, seeing as there is no internet to verify that the code is valid. Problem being for MS with that idea: people would hack the system to learn said codes or bring the code cards back to the state with them.
In conclusion, I don't know how they could implement a system that would work properly under their conditions.
Jake Tower
Banned
Good work