Microsoft defends Xbox One, says people don’t like change

Microsoft isn’t really all that interested in hearing your opinion about the new Xbox One console. Don’t like that it has to connect to the Internet once every 24 hours? Too bad. Upset about Redmond’s policy towards pre-owned games? Sorry, complaint box is full.

As Microsoft exec Yusuf Mehdi told Ars Technica, the negative reaction was “kind of as we expected.”

“We’re trying to do something pretty big in terms of moving the industry forward for console gaming into the digital world. We believe the digital world is the future, and we believe digital is better,” he claimed.

“I think it’s fair to say there’s a segment of consumers at [E3] in particular who really pay attention, who are very passionate about all aspects of gaming, and that we listen to closely. In a broader set of community, people don’t pay attention to a lot of the details. We’ve seen it in the research, we’ve seen it in a lot of the data points.”

Microsoft rep Don Mattrick expressed similar sentiments in an interview with Gametrailers.

“The average internet connection is working the majority of the day. People are imagining that it isn’t, but I don’t feel that’s the world we live in.We appreciate the passion. It’s important that people share their ideas, but people are imagining outcomes that we believe are worse than what it’s going to be like in the real world,” he said.

“When we designed the box we paid attention to what it means to connect to the internet. Fortunately we have a product for people who aren’t able to get some form of connectivity – it’s called Xbox 360… If you have zero access to the internet, that is an offline device.”