We decided to talk to a few Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers about what this will mean for gaming in the military. It's worth noting the military is comprised mostly of males, ages 18 - 35, the key demographic for video games.



"I predict a major shift to PlayStation Marine Corps-wide," said a former Marine who's done two tours aboard a carrier strike group at sea and who has beta-tested games for various companies. "Xbox is going to tank in the military."



...



"Xbox was the previous favorite," the Marine said. "'Halo' has always been an essential team LAN game aboard ship. It was almost a standard. Lots of people had it so easy to link Xboxes for 4 on 4," said the Marine. "Xbox was king of social gaming aboard ship."



...



A group of gaming Marines, Soldiers and Sailors broke down some numbers for us, and it turns out that somewhere around 25 to 30,000 troops do duty aboard ship at any given moment. Another Navy Sailor pointed out to us that there's at least 6 to 7,000 troops aboard those submarines Mattrick so flippantly referenced. Not to mention the majority of the stateside military living in barracks rooms, where random room changes occur regularly.



Counting the Coast Guard, the number of active duty military, most of which lives in barracks housing, rests at around 1.4 million. That's a lot of units sold or not sold — [take our POLL] — even more of a reason Mattrick might want to step tenderly around the subject of uniformed members.



We contacted Microsoft for a statement about Mattrick's punchline and its implications. In specific, we wanted to know if there was any consideration at all for troops serving in austere conditions.



This was the Microsoft response we recieved:



“With Xbox One you can game offline for up to 24 hours on your primary console, or one hour if you are logged on to a separate console accessing your library. Offline gaming is not possible after these prescribed times until you re-establish a connection. Although we’re very excited about Xbox One, we remain dedicated to Xbox 360 now and for years to come. In fact, we are expecting some of the greatest blockbusters of 2013 and 2014 to come out on Xbox 360 such as ‘Grand Theft Auto V,’ ‘Call of Duty: Ghosts,’ ‘Madden NFL 25’ and ‘FIFA 14.’”