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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.
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.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
but either way it's not good news for Microsoft
An employee posting company related information without clearance, especially things like "deal with it", deserved to be reprimanded at the least.
I'm going off topic here, but I want to make a complaint. /. has gone down hill since being bought by Dice. In the old days /. would make it clear if there was some relationship between /. a site it linked to (e.g. "Slashdot and SourceForge are both part of OSDN"). However, now this doesn't happen any more. And it should. Not only that, if a submitter is related to Dice or to /., it should be made clear. And if you are only linking to an article on /. (e.g. in the ridiculous BI or SlashCloud sections) it should also be made clear.
Now mod me down (I shall become more powerful than you can imagine).
HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
How does MS feel about an always on Internet Requirement for all games on the Xbox? Obviously the customers don't like it, but does MS care what it's customers want?
Be seeing you...
I don't see the problem with a job that requires you to be always hired :-P
I'm not buying that shit. Neither should you.
ranting and bitching about Steve Ballmer for almost a decade with no results. Turns out the correct method is twitter?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Dad: Here kid, I got you a Ouya!
Kid: Waaaaahhhh!
I'll be the first to admit I enjoy a bit of give and take with snarky comments on the Internet, but for a person in his position I though his condescending Twitter comments regarding people who dare to live in places such as Wisconsin or Virginia were a bit shocking in their arrogance. I can't say I'm surprised at all at Microsoft letting him go.
Except the problem for MS isn't parents who will say, "No." It's parents who will say, "No. We're getting a PS4 instead because it has 99% of the same games and doesn't have absurd DRM requirements."
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Lost your job? Deal with it.
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".
Yeah, the key word is absurd though. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive DRM. I've only ever had Steam piss me off once, which honestly I feel is a fair trade off for the great deals and convenience it offers.
Always online DRM? Absurd.
DRM that ties a game to a specific machine so if your console dies and you replace it, it's a pain in the ass to play the game you bought? Absurd.
Online DRM that mostly stays out of my way and offers an offline mode, and in turn offers me a convenient store with great deals? Not absurd.
Of course no DRM is preferable, but I can't fault companies trying to protect their investment AS LONG as it doesn't overly convenience me as a legitimate customer.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
You're doing it wrong.
Kid: "Dad, can I have an x-box", answer: "no".......
Kid: "Dad, can I have an x-box", answer: smacks kids across the face
Kid: "I'm sorry, Dad"
That's how it goes in my house.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Because Sony is somehow better? Removing functionality, backward compatibility, being more expensive, root-kits, etc? How hasn't Sony fucked up in this generation of consoles?
Sony doesn't make people buy a monthly subscription just to watch Neftlix, which is an important factor for me. I'll probably switch from Xbox to PS for the next generation for that reason alone. It'll save me hundreds of dollars over the life of the console, I can't ignore that huge savings.
FWIW I started with a 360 and bought a PS3 later on, I was an XBox fanboy originally, but nowadays I could care less who "wins" a console battle (I guess I'm getting old).
But now I do have both, now I am apathetic to fanboyism I do feel that objectively the 360 feels more polished, the controllers not only feel better to hold and use, but the PS3 buttons even just outright feel like they don't respond sometimes. There's a lot of awkward inconsistencies such as sometimes when you download a game from the store you get an unlock file, and others you get the full game, and other times you get random extra downloads on top, then it's non-obvious what files you can delete so you end up with these files that do nothing but you're unsure if it's safe to delete them. Patching is horrendous, I had to download many 10s of gigabytes of patches for the handful of games I bought such that on my connection (a mere 4mbps, but still double the recommended 2mbps minimum for modern consoles) I ended up spending my first two to three days of owning the system patching games. The sign up process to Sony online was brutal, the site kept going down and I desperately tried to recover an SOE account from years ago but apparently that's a different Sony online thing to the Playstation one and that made it all a bit of a pain. It's still not a bad console, and yes Microsoft's advertising on the 360 UI after you've paid £40 a year is annoying, and yes it costs £40 a year, but the 360 is just so much more of a pleasure to use, it's so much more polished, and you spend so much less time patching.
All that ignores Sony's arrogance towards it's customers, but I bought mine after the Linux debacle, the removal of backwards compat. etc. so I knew exactly what I was buying (though that's subject to change given their history I guess).
If the 360 never existed the PS3 would still be a decent console, and even with the 360 I've had many hours of enjoyment out of my PS3 as both a Bluray player and on games like the Little Big Planet series, the Killzone series, and the Uncharted series. But if I was doing it all again knowing what I know now, even with the RROD debacle, I'd most definitely still have bought the 360 first.
Yeah, the key word is absurd though. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive DRM.
That's why I don't understand MS' silence on the always-on requirement. The Xbox 360 already has a working DRM system. It's very difficult to play a game unless you have the disc or purchased it from the Marketplace. Sure, I've heard some people manage to pirate Xbox 360 games, but I don't know of anyone who's even thought about doing that, and it's a lot of work. Frankly, I would be very surprised if 1% of Xbox 360 owners pirate any of their games. So from Microsoft's perspective, it should be a non-issue.
Therefore, the only reason for the always-on requirement is to kill the used game market. Could MS really be that stupid? Only time will tell.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Yeah, but my guess is they're thinking the "game on a disk" thing is on the way out (probably not wrong), and are looking for DRM outside of that model.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Oh dear, we have a fanboy.
"This shows you have never actually used a PS3. After installation, there is just "the game". "Game data" and "Patch/DLC" may exist at some point, but only if you have run the game or downloaded them. These are all clearly labeled (assuming you know the definition of "DLC" or "Settings") and in a single location with the same game icon. There are no "files" that are "non-obvious"."
So tell me genius, why when I download the trial of Joe Danger, and then later bought the Joe Danger + Joe Danger 2 pack that was on sale did I end up with two copies of Joe Danger, with no way of telling which was my bought copy and which wasn't when I go to delete? Why when I downloaded Guardians of Middle Earth as a PS+ subscriber do I get a license file that remains after I've unlocked the game, can I delete it or not? Do I need this license file? You mention yourself DLC downloads - some of these I got by unlocking free content, I download them, they appear, so can I delete them then or what? Sometimes I seem to have to install them and they dissapear, other times not. It's non-obvious, it's inconsistent. There's literally nothing anywhere that tells you if it's safe to delete, it's entirely guess work and the user interface is structures such that you really need to delete it as that single file vertical list can get rather annoyingly long rather quickly.
"While the demo+key solution may not seem like the most elegant, it's pretty nice when you try a game, decide you like it, and then don't have to spend another hour redownloading the full version .. you can just unlock it and continue playing in a minute or few total."
Yes and that's great, that's how it works on the 360 (although it's more streamlined - you buy the game and the license file installation is performed automatically and transparently) but it's not even consistent, some games do it others don't, when I download the free game "Guardians of Middle Earth" I end up with this 300kb or so file which obviously isn't the full game, I have to figure out for myself that somewhere else on the store in a completely different place, buried out the way, is the trial which I can download and apply this license to manually.
"This is not "objective"."
It's objective because I have no interest in some petty fanboy fight because I grew up and got past that, and as someone who has some experience with ergonomics and interface design I can see that objectively, Microsoft have done a better job of putting things together in those regards. Yes you may feel personally you prefer the PS3 controller, but I guarantee you that in an unbiased study, you'd be very much in the minority.
"OK at this point it's clear we're dealing with FUD. The biggest patch I've ever seen was around 200MB. The biggest downloadable full game I've ever seen is 14GB (though I typically buy discs .. infamous 2 was free for PS+). Never have these required "10s of gigabytes of patches"."
So let me get this straight, you're saying I've never used a PS3 and then you proceed to spout what is trivially demonstrably false? Little Big Planet 2, 1.20 is 1gb alone. When you patch LBP, and LBP2 up alone you've got a few gigabytes, doing Resistance, God of War series, Killzone series, MGS4 etc. easily pumped that up to over 10gb.
"Er... so filling in a few blanks on the screen was "brutal"? I suppose if you're really a cluebie"
Yes, when the site repeatedly goes down, and when completely innocent and harmless nicknames I try I can't have without reason why and where the message as to why I can't have it changes from already taken, to some arbitrary message about invalid nickname (even though it was valid in terms of the rules stated).
"In any case, this entire rant comes off either FUD, an incredibly inexperienced user, or someone who uses a 360 and watched their kids using a PS3."
This would be funny if it weren't so sad that you make such a statement whilst apparently knowing less about the system t
I'm going to jump in here and buck the hivemind by saying this may have been a case of Internet overreaction and mob persecution. This guy has said multiple times that this was a snarky banter between friends on Twitter, he just had the lack of foresight to make his feed private. I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, considering the horrible things I sometimes say to provoke my friends.
Would you want to be held accountable to your entire customer base for your snarky conversations with your friends? If you made some wholly inappropriate out of context comment while baiting/trolling your buddies, would you want the world to treat that as not only your actual stance, but that of your employer?
Now before the nerd rage bubbles over, let me caveat:
At best, the guy was at least a dumbass who didn't realize how connected his life was. In a position like that, even when he's talking with friends, he's talking with the Internet and cannot help but represent his job considering how many people it affects. Games are serious business on the Intertron, and you flick the nose of your customers at your peril.
At worst, he was the arrogant douche the internet proclaims him to be and sold himself on his company's own Kool-Aid, which is a terrible mistake in any profession and he paid the price.
I think it's good for Microsoft that this issue was dragged out into the spotlight before the console launched - and I think it's tragic that it cost Adam a career. Let this be a lesson for people in high-profile game industry positions - you are NEVER just talking to one person on the Internet, and the public eye never blinks.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Just use the Netflix player built into your TV. If your TV doesn't have it, $50 and you can have a Roku that will play your Netflix. Netflix on a gaming console falls into the category of, 'They might as well offer it since the device can handle it.' It shouldn't even come into play in deciding to buy a game system. Of course, paying an extra fee to watch Netflix on your console is just plain absurd.