Microsoft's Next-Gen Sets Itself Back

So, there is a console-war about to kick off, and a few opening rounds have been fired, with more to come in the ensuing months.
However, one of those rounds fired was aimed straight at the consumer base...huh? Thats right, Microsoft employee Adam Orth, newly crowned hero to Sony/Nintendo fans, spouted off on Twitter last night, attacking, well everyone.
Let me give some background information first. Officially, the next xbox has not been announced and all of the information pertaining to it is strictly "rumored." Two of the biggest rumors are mandatory Kinect (Lengthy Video) and Always online. (Always online article)
The always online rumors have really picked up of late, and after the disasterous SimCity launch, fan feedback has been largely negative towards the idea. Hostility amplified with the latest article stating that if the xbox lost internet for 3 minutes, the game would stop and players would no longer be able to play. Again, I stress that these are rumors, and they have been posted by Kotaku, not exactly reliable.
Well ladies and gentleman, hard working Adam Orth did not take too kindly to such hostility, breaking normal company policy and addressing said hostile reactions on twitter. Hilarity ensues: Huh? Even Amandarius makes more sense than this. But he wasn't done, in what will do more for Sony's PS4 than their marketing team could ever do, he posted this response to a Bioware employee:
Well then, ok. So far I have been completely neutral regarding next gen, but this was almost enough to push me to pre-ordering a PS4. How is that for dealing with it, Adam?
Microsoft has sense issued an apology:Not a spokesperson, ok, but still an employee, and your name is on his tweets. This is going to be a marketing disaster for Microsoft, I can just see E3 now, Sony rolls out Kevin Butler for an Adam Orth roast. Even if these rumors turn out to not be true, and they are looking more and more credible, else why would an employee even address them, Microsoft has a pretty big hole to climb out of because of this one man. I expect him to resign soon enough, too little too late. IGN Source article. Feel free to discuss, I am going to find a battery operated vacuum cleaner.
Edit - Adam Orth is a Creative Director at Microsoft.
Edited for clarification.

I heard about this earlier, but the logic of not buying a phone due to not having reception is actually a logical one.

I know many people who live in an area where cell reception is unheard of, none of them own cell phones, short of the ones that are employed in an area where they have reception, and the only one I can think of their employer pays for it.

M$ is shooting themselves in the foot if they truly go this route, at this rate all the software support may be weary: short of EA.

Apparently an employee's tweet is held accountable for whatever troll tweet he does even if what he wrote has no words directly hinting that he's whiteknighting the said-possible function on a device that isn't even out yet.

People are blowing this out of proportion.
Bring out the pitchforks next time when a burger flipper stepped on your foot accidently.

Feel free to elaborate how an employee telling off potential consumers is "blowing things out of proportion." Always online is a hated concept that has caused one company to be voted a semifinalist in the worst company in the US contest for the 2nd year in a row (among other numerous reasons), and another to drop it entirely. Its a real issue in the gaming world and last I checked pissing off the fanbase who has more reasons to leave than stay is not smart.

Reality is: people are taking this "tweet" way out of context, I agree with you that pissing off the fanbase is not smart regardless of what reason, but being all sorts of butthurt by reading a tweet from an employee that makes no executive decision of said company is just simply dumb.

Gamers have a frail heart I guess.

The idea of "always online" is a sore spot with gamers and anyone who pushes it as a good idea will always be targets for being roasted over an open flame. The very mention of DRM is enough to send some gamers into a Hulk-esque rampage. It's sorta everything wrong with modern gaming rolled up into one helluva controversial topic.

This guy only made it more entertaining considering by putting up resistance instead of shutting up like a good employee is trained to do. The existence of individuals like himself mean that behind the scenes some people might be pitching DRM.

To me it seems like he he is basically "confirming" it to the people caught up in the rumor mill. At least Sony had a laugh at the whole thing though.

I blame myself for not clarifying Adam Orth's position with Microsoft in the OP. He isn't just a random employee, he is a creative director, so he is involved in a lot of the decision making that goes on in the company. Pretty high up on the food chain, I wouldn't go as far as to say he makes executive decisions, but he is at that table.

Isnt he the creative director of the entire xbox brand now?

Makes perfect sense but again:

Be it DRM, all time online etc, consoles are constantly evolving, people used to resent the idea of swapping from floppies to cassettes , and from cassettes to CD-ROMs.... setting precedents of new ways of gaming, for better or worse has been happening for years, 10 years from now maybe even your toaster would be wifi controllable, who knows?

Thank you for clarifying that, it makes more sense as to why people would roast him so hard, but I stand with my opinion because you said this topic is open up for discussion. I still think people are taking this wayyyyy too serious though he should have been more delicate with his tweets since he's in such high position.

I find it has more to do with the issue that the developers/higher ups are really out of touch with the wants and or needs of the consumer base and blatantly ignore them when it comes to severe concerns.

Not everybody lives in suburbia or big cities, to be fair the highest population densities are there, but hell the only reason I got a 360 in the first place was to lan play at my friend's house, who didn't have high speed internet, and still doesn't.

Oh and satellite isn't a solution, the latency would cause so many disconnects it isn't funny.

I know one thing: if they go the "always online" route, I won't be getting one.

I have a somewhat unique perspective to add into why i'm HEAVILY against always online, my job in the navy is to serve on board submarines, we often bring consoles underway with us to pass the time.

You don't get internet under the water, hell even surface ships (last i knew) have a very limited access (i.e. for emails/no gaming) so yeah always online = crap.

"Always On" is a very very VERY bad, incredibly bad, horribly bad idea. It essentially allows the console manufacturer to take complete control over your device whenever and wherever they want. They can easily disable your device from their side and you can no longer play any content you've already purchased. Essentially you no longer pay $50 USD to buy games but instead to rent them with a return policy at the discretion of the producer.

You own $500 USD worth of games plus another $300 USD for the console itself. They black list your device, your now out $800 USD and have to repurchase all of it. One helluva revenue stream just waiting to exploit.

And for those about to argue against that, they've already mentioned locking purchased titles to the console.

Also "always on" allows them to fine tune and extract maximum profit from regional purchasers. I live in East Asia yet I purchase NA region content. "Always On" can easily prevent me from playing my content due to my connection coming from a Korean ISP. Even worse my ISP can decide to restrict that connection unless I pay them for the "Gamers Package".

They resented it from a financial matter, as in they resented the expense of replacing their old media with new ones, or being forced to have multiple stereo components or w/e. This is a different issue, where people are concerned with unstable internet access, reduction (or elimination) of used/rental games, forced updates, and "big brother" monitoring, which MS loves to do.
I won't get a new XBox anyway unless there is an XBox-ONRY game that I cannot live without. I cut the cord on mine 3 1/2 years ago and haven't missed it.

If anyone is concerned about the whole always online thing, just look at Diablo 3. I played it for a little bit and constantly was raging at it. Rubber banding, severe lag issues, game stopping then suddenly continueing with me being dead, ect. All that was on SOLO mode btw. A game should not be online only and you should not have to deal with latency issues while playing single player. As Knala had said, i also am in the military and on deployments we do not have internet. So you're telling me in the next few years i will go from having consols and computer games to keep my off time occupied to just being SOL and not able to play anything because i need internets?

Yeah no, sorry but I guess i will be sticking to the retro crap. Diablo II, FFVII, emulators, DS, ect

Consoles don't seem to like the internet in my house so I probably wouldn't have bought it even if I was still interested in adrevenuebox. The little optimism I have tells me Adam's just being a clever troll. But seeing the stuff people willingly put up with in gaming has me believe they'll burn out.

False equivalencies my friend.

Changing over from Floppy to CDROM is a change in how the media is delivered and in the grand scheme of things that CDROM I bought from Westwood to play Command and Conquer is mine to do with as I please.

DRM is another thing entirely. It's a calculated strategy to have control over what gamers do and monitor your actions for the express purpose of killing your game remotely, killing your console remotely, sending you ads, pushing DLC and overall taking any control from you and placing it in the hands of companies with agendas.

If I pay 60 bucks for a game, why should Blizzard have complete control over what I do? What happened to OFFLINE gameplay? Perhaps I don't want to do multiplayer and if I do want to multiplayer then it should be my CHOICE to go online and do so. This push towards always online and you're a slave to the EULA must be taken seriously or it will become reality.

So anytime it pops up, it will be a sore spot.

A good example is D3. While Always online isnt what made the story, gameplay and all around game trash, It really didnt help. People are still pirating SC2 and its online only, among other games so I see no real point in it to begin with but that my opinion. Online only will cause me to not buy next gen items but hey thats just me.





Lets not forget Simcity as well

I guess your new to next generation information you have to post something about news that's been rumored for 6 months at least .First off M$ said it had planned to have constant connection all along and don't be surprised if Sony follows suit and it's almost certain that games will be linked or registered to a particular console because game developers want this to push sales because of the high cost of developing,publishing and marketing games which means stores that make a living on game trading like Gamestop or game rentals like Gamefly are going to take major financial hit unless they work out some sort of pay-for-code that people can buy to unlock the used games.Neither issues have any effect for me since I don't use Gamefly and my fios is always on anyways.

The "I don't use this service" or "this always works for me anyways" is kind of a lame cop-out for a very pressing matter that affects a great percentage of potential consumers they're attempting to market for.

To even remotely consider the always-on internet connection as a mandate for functionality speaks volumes and presents tangible testimony to how out of touch higher ups are from their consumer base and target audience. DRM of any measure has always been approaching a service problem from the angle of loss prevention, which time and time again has continuously alienated legitimate customers and further provided incentive and enabled people to resort to the very thing they're attempting to control and/or eliminate.

Even for SC2 being online only. At least its free to play online. Xbox has this gold membership bs and crap and if they were to do a "Online always" on top of still charging to play games online = ultimate downfall for M$

but i will admit, i would not pay for a gaming system to be always online and even if they locked bought games to the system, its still not worth it.

EDIT: As for simcity. As much as i loved the past ones. I won't get the new one with zero offline play. Also you can't edit the map or the size. Even tho SC2 is online, its online for achievements & Player vs Player Matchs. Can still play offline for Player v AI.

I don't even think they're out touch. They argue for this because from their point of view gamers will just grit and bear it, *** what the whiners say otherwise. This has been seen constantly with big launches that go belly up where the first response is to blame haters/fans for not supporting the title rather than looking inward and realizing that whats being churned out is not what the fans wanted.

XIV?
D3?
Simcity?

Just three games in a pattern of "*** the players, we know best" attitude coming out of these developer strongholds as gaming becomes a big business akin to film and art. What started as a refuge for societies outcasts has now been brought mainstream and with that will continue to come individuals who care only about the bottom line even if it means burning valuable bridges to their fanbases.

I'm all for casual, silly games that entertain the masses but this idea that a company must control my console under the spooky pretense of immanent doom due to piracy is similar to the political terrorist boogeymen. It'll be the pretense to do everything if you don't speak up to say something about it.

Oh well, soon we'll have advertisements before you boot up the game you paid for. Whats that? 2hours have passed, heres a commerical for some DLC that this console indicates you have purchased yet. ***, just have the console talk to me about why I need to buy X,Y,Z title.

People saying that it's no big deal because it's just one guy need to realize that he's likely not speaking solely for himself here. If he was the only one at MS thinking that "always on" is a good idea I doubt he would have had the confidence to make such a definitive statement. He probably thought he was towing the company line, and maybe he was up until the backlash caused MS to reverse course.

He broke the rule that if you're going to push something you know the customers won't like, you don't get on a soapbox and announce you're going to *** them over.

You do it silently.

Then again, you could take the approach that he did this in order to prove a point to those in the company that DO think DRM is the way to by being so forward about it as a field experiment but thats me probably giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe he was stupid enough to think that he could talk down gamers on their home turf? Some people have been known to be that stupid.

Regardless or the strat I imagine its going to be a hell of a console war when around what 35% of people dont have steady net? and out of the 65% that do i imagine at least 25% wont even buy it on launch because of it so that leaves a nice 40% of the playerbase actually buying it. Nice. I bet they are gonna complain about the usual "Didnt do as well as expected" What the hell did you expect? lol You killed used games and online only? You cant even browse the internet efficiently on a console so ill spend that money on a new PC. Not like most games arent on PC anyways these days.