Redmond, Washington -- A somber Don Mattrick stood before a gaggle of reporters today to publicly apologize for the inevitable server meltdown that will prevent millions of gamers from playing their next-generation XBox consoles later this year. 

"We will make a lot of mistakes when the new XBox releases this holiday season," said Mattrick, current president of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business. "But we're most sorry for the one which will brick your console, making it impossible for you to play games on it." 

Many in the press wanted to know why Microsoft can't simply prepare for higher than expected demand. "That would require us spending money on more and better servers, which we all know isn't something we have any interest in doing. And we're sorry for that. Next time we'll do better, except we won't, and we'll apologize for that when the time comes. Actually, right now seems a good a time as any: We are very sorry for not doing better even though we promised we would after the last server crash which hasn't happened yet but totally will, you can count on it." 

As expected, gaming forums and comments sections around the internet exploded with activity following the brief press conference. GameSpot user HaloDongMan89 expressed appreciation for Microsoft's honesty. 

"Thnx MS! Be buyin 720 Day 1!!1 #Honisty"

This opinion was in the decided minority, however, as demonstrated in a response by Troll_Face_LUL5:

"Fanboy! Eat [expletive] and die, [expletive]!" 

The outlook may be bleak for anyone willing to pay for a machine that only works part of the time, but Mattrick was quick to offer guidance to those who will eventually suffer from the numerous server crashes.

"You could read a magazine, or watch the DVD boxed set of your favorite TV show. Whatever you do, make sure the Kinect 2.0 can see it, because once the servers are back online, we're totally going to need that information."