Microsoft Game Director Adam Orth Resigns Following Xbox Comments

DavidGilbert99 writes "According to anonymous sources, Microsoft's game director Adam Orth has left the company following a series of comments on Twitter about the rumoured always-on aspect of the next generation Xbox console. It is still unclear if Orth left voluntarily or was pushed out but either way it's not good news for Microsoft." If you'd prefer your news without obnoxious auto-playing video ads (with sound!), IGN reports Orth's departure, too.

Comments

Fantastic.

[popoutman]

This is one appropriate course of action for someone in that position that made those comments. However it should have been treated publicly as a firing offence though instead of a graceful exit, as most companies I know would have seen these communications as an example of gross incompetence and would have treated accordingly.

Re:Fantastic.

[ozmanjusri]

why call on Microsoft to publically humiliate Orth?

Exactly. he deserves our support, not this tarring and feathering. At least he was honest and said what others at Microsoft clearly thought and intended, but were too sly to admit publicly. Those sly, dishonest people are the only ones who've been damaged by his comments..

Thanks to him, potential buyers of this product know what they're facing. Any potential customers here should be thanking him for giving them the heads-up.

Re:Fantastic.

[Tridus]

When he started saying stuff like "why would anyone want to live there?" in response to comments about not having quality broadband available everywhere in the US, he stepped across the line into general jackass territory.

Other comments were insulting

[EMG at MU]

The comments cited by TFA weren't the problem in my opinion. He has a unpopular viewpoint on a subject that a lot of his former employer's customer base feels strongly about but the other comments basically insulting people who don't live in large metro areas are the firing offence to me.

I can't find the quotation so this is from memory but someone responded to his tweet by saying "sometimes the internet is spotty in other areas of the country like Kansas and that's why always on would suck" and Orth responded "why would anyone live there". That's pretty much a big fuck you to a large part of the country. Not a wise move to disparage millions of potential customers. I think that comment and the attitude it conveys is a bigger problem than him stating his opinion about "always on".

Re:Why not?

[gstoddart]

He made a valid point. Living in places without good internet access is like choosing to eat at a restaurant with bad food.

Oh, horseshit. People have all sorts of reasons for living in rural areas (cost of living, lower crime, because they want to, because that's where their job is). Are you suggesting everyone should move out of every rural area for the cities and leave the rest deserted just so they can have access to the internet?

The internet isn't the be all and end all of the world, and lots of people still want to be able to play games without the need for an internet connection.

My XBox no longer connects to the network, because once they started putting ads into both the home screen and the games they crossed the line into "absolutely not". I don't play games on-line, I have no interest in playing games on-line, and it's none of their fscking business when I play, what games I play, or for how long. And I'm certainly not giving them a platform to show me ads.

Always-on internet and DRM is meant to give them control over the consumer, as well as making sure to get some extra revenue from ads, and maybe garner information about your gaming habits.

Being required to do this is more like choosing to eat at a restaurant which serves bad food, because you're being told "eat shit, if you want to play you have no choice".

Well, there is a choice, and that's to simply not buy the next XBox. If they require always-on internet, that's the choice I'll be exercising.