Microsoft Refused to Sell Xbox 360s to Military

[Honis]

I'm glad MS refused to sell them to the militery. It would have been used by one party or other to "prove" the incompetence of contracting projects when they all RRoD. Before anyone says "warranty" you must realize the military can not send them in until doing so was funded (re-boxing them still cost man hours.) Isn't the government awesome?

 

[darthbane1138]

sell the computers for $300 and the 360's for $1,000 to the military, then the greedy idiots wont loose $$$

 

[palladin9479]

The US Military (DoD) purchase large orders of PC's on a contractual basis. These systems come with an all inclusive 3 yr warranty, meaning if anything happens to them the company replaces the part or the system in its entirety. The DoD's IT guys have more important things to do then building / maintaining desktop PC's. This results in PC's have a price tag of about 50% higher then what a home user would pay, but they come with full support and gold support status.

If a system has a problem, we call Dell put in the system tag and our organization's code and the Dell technician comes out the next business day to replace the part and determine the cause of the problem. Its basically enterprise server level support for all the desktop systems. That being said, not all units are knowledgeable enough to actually know how to put in those work orders. Also the warranty is only good for 3yr's, afterwords the systems are supposed to be life cycled out (donated to schools / used in extremely low priority missions) for newer systems.

 

[Guest]

First up to the people claiming you can get a more powerful PC for $500, we are talking about back in 2006, that certainly wasn't the case then.
Secondly, the army isn't 'kids in their bedrooms'. If they are going to assemble PCs from parts, someone has to do that. If they have to assemble thousands of them, then lots of people have to be paid to do that. That bumps the price up considerably, as does requisitioning all of the components instead of ordering a single item.
And yeah that is what the military needs, "some guys with skil33zz build them pc's for cheap".

 

[darkknight22]

and in other news Sony came out and said "well don't mind if I do!"

 

[micky_lund]

ahh...xbox 360...fail

 

[porksmuggler]

[citation][nom]tayb[/nom]First off, you don't build PC's. You assemble them. The army isn't going to be custom assembling hundreds or thousands of desktops. Even if you want to assume they could or would the price you quoted was $200 more than the price of an Xbox 360. Why in the world would they pay $200 more so they can get the privilege of assembling them all themselves? Illogical. [/citation]

That's funny, I've been building PCs for over 15 years, and yes dumb-ass, it's build. When you build a house, do you make the bricks, plywood, and nails on site? Build, construct, and assemble are all correct. By the way, it's PCs not PC's. Why would you also assume he meant custom built? The Army could easily purchase Xbox 360 comparable OEM BUILT PCs for $500 if the PC manufacturers weren't trying to milk a fat government contract. Of course, that's the real reason Microsoft refused the sale also.

 

[zoemayne]

[citation][nom]zoemayne[/nom]I had a thought a few days ago that Sony should stop selling PS3's to the gov. *Sony sold ~8000 PS3's to the gov (the gov was buying them to save money on computing expenses) but Sony is loosing money cause they will make $0 profit from game sales from those sales. I think Sony may be still selling PS3's at a loss. Smart move on the goverments part. I think it was the department of Defense.[/citation]

 

[nebun]

ok, when it comes to processing power xbox is more powerful, they just have crappy graphics and no ram. i'll stick with a pc for now

 

[christop]

they could buy bulk pc parts build nice systems for about 450 to 500 to train on.. Not a 1000..

 

[Guest]

Soldier: This childs entertainment must be turned into a weapon before the japs do it.

Scientist: Yeah, that seems like the best thing to do.

... South Park

 

[anamaniac]

[citation][nom]tacoslave[/nom]I guess they buy their gaming pc's from dell. They should just let some guys with skil33zz build them pc's for cheap.[/citation]
Could you imagine having to build 5,000 if the exact same system?
That'd be boring as cold balls...

 

[dgruginski]

some of you guys are forgetting support costs for PC's and that they aren't going to have soldiers build their own pc's. So instead of a bunch of xbox360's that you can send out when they break you have to deal with tech support when pc breaks. Otherwise, you will spend at least $1000 on a pc.

 

[Ehsan w]

can anybody tell me why the 360 is so expensive to make....

 

[nukem950]

He continued, "The third reason was around the question of, '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?'"

Umm... I play my Brother's XBox360 for the first person shooters. So I already see the XBOX360 as a killing machine.

 

[kronos_cornelius]

The Xbox is custom hardware for home gaming. The military is big enough to do it the way Google does, build your own machines ! putting many of these machines together to save money sounds like a nice project for an enthusiast, not the roll you should expect from the military.
They should be looking to make Nvidia 3D gaming desktops with 240hz monitors and active 3D glasses (or equivalent from ATI/AMD) at least.
The Xbox is so obsolete on the hardware only 10 year-olds should be interested in using them for gaming. I had the change to play GTA on a Xbox in my HD tv, and it looked awful. UT3, Fallout3 and others in contrast look crisp and liquid smoother (when tunned) on my phenom desktop.

 

[vaughn2k]

"We wanted to get on to the Microsoft Xbox because it only costs $300, when a PC may cost $1,000."

Athlon X2 240, with 780G mboard chipset, 2gb of RAM, with 320gb Hard drive would cost around ~U$280.00

 

[Guest]

Umm.. why tell MS? Just buy the xboxes, the whole point of our military is that this is a FREE COUNTRY. Obama doesn't even know how to buy shit... Her Majesties Royal Navy uses PSPs, and guess what, they just bought them - no special deal with sony.

 

[Guest]

Shows you that Microsoft was perfectly happy to grow rich in America but not willing to help defend it. Thus once again you have a schism between advanced capitalism and the nation-state.

 

[jkflipflop98]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]MS refuses to sell Xbox to the US Army.US Army drives down to Fry's and buys the off the shelf like everyone else.Problem solved?[/citation]

Problem being that for any software to legally run on the xbox, M$ has to sign off on it first.