Obama says: Put away the Xbox, Microsoft responds

Mike Bantick
Monday, 20 July 2009 05:38

Your IT - Entertainment

U.S President Barack Obama suggests it is time for parents to put away the Xbox, Microsoft says just hang on there a minute Mr President.

In his Thursday night speech commemorating the 100th anniversary of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) [see video extract below], President Barack Obama was going through a step by step way to help the youth of today.

Obama said “To parents, we can’t tell our kids to do well in school and fail to support them when they get home. For our kids to excel, we must accept our own responsibilities. That means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour. It means attending those parent-teacher conferences, reading to our kids, and helping them with their homework.”

Which, in context seems fair enough, but high in the dark bat-swirled towers of castle Microsoft, certain spokespeople plotted a response.

Via GamePolitics.com the Microsoft response was: “We agree with President Obama that it’s a time for families to work together so that kids use media in ways that are safe, healthy and balanced. Xbox 360 is the only console gaming system that has a timer feature allowing parents to set time limits for their kids, as well as parent controls to enable parents to set limits on what their kids are playing and watching.”

At the same time, Microsoft is probably very happy that the Xbox 360 got a mention, five years ago, the default ‘game console’ noun would have been ‘PlayStation’.