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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.
That's what I thought, I don't see how "either way it's not good news for Microsoft". If the employee was incompetent because he caused harm to the company then getting rid of him is damn good news because it means he can't do it again.
I somewhat wonder if Microsoft have been having the always-on DRM debate internally and Adam Orth was in fact on the losing side of that internal discussion and took to Twitter to bitch about consumers who don't like always-on DRM simply because he lost the internal debate on the topic to the argument that consumers will fucking hate it.
I say this because I'd be surprised if Microsoft do go the always on DRM route, I don't think even MS is that stupid, but time will tell I guess.
Either way, good fucking riddance. This is one of those few things every once in a while Microsoft does that is absolutely right and that they absolutely shouldn't be faulted for. This guy was an idiot.
I say this because I'd be surprised if Microsoft do go the always on DRM route, I don't think even MS is that stupid, but time will tell I guess.
Stupid might not be the right word. "Being stuck inside the corporate bubble" but be better. "Arrogant" might be another.
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'm not buying that shit. Neither should you.
Indeed.
I think the other point that dropped out of the discussion in this particular case (though plenty of people have brought it up elsewhere) is that people don't so much fear always-online requirements because they're worried their net connect might blip out (though that's a perfectly fair concern), but rather because they can see the thin end of the wedge approaching and recognise always-online as a direct underpinning for blocks on used games and rentals.
MS may be getting a lot of pressure from game developers to implement those blocks, but to do so would be absolutely suicidal given customers have a choice to jump to an unrestricted PS4 instead.
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".
Or since the next generation of consoles are x86 architecture anyway, just jump back to PC gaming. The whole reason for using the standard x86 is so developers can more easily port games between consoles and PCs. Why bother with a five to eight hundred dollar console with very few exclusive games that's going to allow MS or Sony to control your gaming library, username and passwords (Which they don't protect properly) and how and when you can you play, when you can get a PC that's going to be twice as good (spec wise), upgradeable as needed for a better experience, will have the same titles and more, allows you to do more than the console will ever allow (media server, indi development, emulator, video player, and much more) without jail breaking/hacking it and when all else fails after buying a game with a shitty DRM will allow you to download a working copy so you can play a game you paid for (Not that I've ever done that, but it's an option)?
My personal opinion is the next generation of consoles is dead in the water. I only have a linux machine at home and with the availability of Steam and indi games, I've only turned my PS3 on in the last 10 months so my 2 year old could watch the Care Bears movie, which doesn't seem to be available on Netflix (build into my TV). I was surprised the PS3 even worked, it's one of the original consoles that had the OtherOS Feature. I was sure Sony would have bricked it by now in some update, which I don't have to worry about them doing on my PC.
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.
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Shhhh, you'll make Windows 8 jealous.
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