At PAX in Seattle this weekend, Mtn Dew (pronounced “Mountain Dew”) is giving away Xbox One consoles as part of a promotion with Microsoft. There are QR barcodes hidden around the Washington State Convention Center and, when scanned with the PAX Guidebook app, can be used to collect points. The points can be redeemed for gear or, if a user has enough, can be used to bid on an Xbox One on Sunday.
The problem is, the app to scan the QR codes only works on iPhone and Android devices – Microsoft MSFT -0.45%’s own Windows Phones are left out of the fun.
It’s almost certainly just an oversight on the end of the organizers and not a deliberate snub, as making a Windows Phone version of the app wouldn’t take much effort at all, but it is perhaps telling of the public’s perception of Microsoft’s mobile operating system.
I’ll be the first to say it, even though I’m an iPhone user: Windows Phone doesn’t suck. In fact, it’s quite excellent and will probably gain in popularity with the next few updates. That said, someone at Mtn Dew is probably going to get an angry call from someone at Microsoft when they figure out that their users have been locked out of a promotion for its own flagship entertainment device at the biggest user-facing gaming convention in the world.