News MS refused to sell Xbox 360s to US Army

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2010/02/10/ms-refused-to-sell-xbox-360s-to-us-army/1

A US Army training expert has revealed that Microsoft refused to let the Army use Xbox 360s as training devices.

 

..Sounds reasonable, actually.

 

More like :

Boss : Damn it, I/We don't want to deal with mass RRoD issues from the Army.
Worker : Don't sell them?

 

What a low blow.

"Hey, they don't want to do business with us because they wouldn't make any profit as we don't buy games from them and they don't want to be associated with us as people will realise that war not just some game for little kids. We really should post this closed business statement everywhere we can so they'll get their negative press anyway."

 

yeah I find MS's decision quite reasonable, with all the fuzz about violence on videogames

 

Nah - bulk purchase kills a sale when there's no profit in the products. Think about it - if the US arm approached Lexmark and said they want to buy 100,000 printers but they were never gonna buy any ink (the only thing that makes the profit), and they want a bulk discount on the printers...

meh

 

they went directly to Microsoft? Surely a Sergeant could have been tasked to browse Amazon or BestBuy......

and these guys are in charge of weapons

 

Sounds pretty reasonable to me...

 

Sony : I'm already making a loss, and you want discounts?!?!?

 

..Yeah, go to places that mark up and add a middleman.

How on Earth was going directly to the source a bad decision?

 

Woo to Microsoft. Good to see someone taking a stand against ACTUAL violence. On a related note: it always confuses me that the Daily Mailers et al who complain about violence in games are the first people to support a war when it happens in real life.

 

...and how exactly would the Xbox be used for training? What would it teach the soldiers? How to circle strafe and scream profanities at one another? How to handle the alien invasion of Earth? How to do a perfect 720 on a snowboard?

The mind boggles

 

There's would be no real financial benefit for Microsoft here, in terms of game sales.

However, if the military really needed some XBOXs, they could still get hold of units from wholesale or retail outlets.
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/07/20/military-using-game-controllers-pilot-drones-disarm-bombs

 

Because this is such a non-story. Given the budget of the US Defence department, sourcing poxy x-boxes via a middleman would probably have less of a markup than one humvee. And aren't they still making a loss on each console sold, or is that just Sony?
Did they just give up at that hurdle, call the press and cry foul, or did they resort to shopping like normal punters when they met with some difficulty......

 

I fail to see how it could be used as a training device myself. I don't think playing call of duty will train them very much

 

MS has just saved thousands of soldiers. There are no military simulators for xbox like ArmA and using casual FPS like CoD for training would end up as total disaster: "...and so I ran across the street, got shot 5 times from AK, so I waited for a few seconds to recover from headshot..."

 

"I hear theres no respawns irl"

 

Hope they don't try the rocket jump then.

 

They use xbox 360/PS3 (lol at wii remote though) pads for there UAV's and other robotic equipment.
the UK does also as people are more used to using them as apposed to normal joysticks.

Note not all UAV's and robotics are used this way but a lot are.

 

... then I received 20 more bullets entering chest and I managed to advance myself towards one of the 50 random health packs lying on the battlefield...