Microsoft has apologized on Wednesday for the “sexist” Xbox One promo ad, which garnered different reactions. It also made some modification to address the issue.
The promotional advertisement which seemed like a “love letter” was meant to convince the sender’s special partner that buying Xbox One is actually beneficial for both of them.
However, it is slightly off beat when it says “I know, I know. You'd rather knit than watch me slay zombies…”
The controversial letter was branded as being “sexist” by commentators through Twitter, including notable comments from Ben Cousins, the developer of The Drowning initially saying, “oh.. oh dear,” then followed by “I get that it's defaults, but defaults are important to the discussion” and Mike Bithell, the developer of Thomas Was Alone, said also on Twitter, “OMG is this the real world?”
A spokesperson for Microsoft has already issued a letter of apology stating, “The letter is customizable and we meant no offense, but understand how the defaults could be perceived.”
“We're making changes to the letter defaults and apologize for the oversight,” they added.
The company, upon receiving negative comments, quickly applied changes to the wordings of the letter. From “knitting,” they changed it to “paying taxes early.”
According to theesa.com, a study that talks about the 2012 sales, demographic and usage data, 53 percent of computer gamers are male and 47 percent are female. Given the statistics the percentage are quite close but according to a report from The Washington Times, though females occupy almost half of the population, they still feel like the minority and the “sexist promo ad” surely made them more feeling down.
Xbox One was released last November 22 in 13 markets -- including the Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain, UK, and U.S. – and its sales reached a whopping 1 million units on the first 24 hours.
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