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Microsoft Studios' creative director has some choice words about always-online

Orca

Member
You're right, and I agree with everyone's reaction to THOSE comments. I'm a little less "upset" about his conversatiaon with Manveer given the context.

Anyone that gets upset over something tweeted in a friendly exchange with Curry Thunder probably gets upset a lot.
 

jtb

Banned
His comments were concurrent with the fallout from the Kotaku article, so even if he was having a private conversation with a friend it's hard to believe it doesn't tie in to the discussion of the console.

Right. The two definitely aren't mutually exclusive (private conversation w/ friend, discussing the console); just defending/explaining the surprisingly common practice of bashing other people's views without actually mentioning them in your tweet, that's all :p
 

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
oh come on. are the personal attacks really necessary? attack the guy's idiotic views, not what he chose as his profile pic.

See, that is why I'm asking if anyone has considered this a bit of an overreaction. The anger over his anti-consumer BS stance is PERFECTLY FINE (IMO). It's total shit, I agree. But you guys know how the internet works, this guy is probably getting death threats and shit because of this too, and the personal attacks are unwarranted.
 
Microsoft just shot themselves in the foot.

I don't know how much the rest of you know about American culture (I'm an expert), but the Xbox™ Brand and Wal-Mart™ Supercenters are huge parts of it. It's not like it is in Japan where you can become successful by being polite and generous. If you screw someone over in America you bring Big Macs to yourself, and the only way to get rid of that Big Mac is repentance.

What this means is the American public, after hearing about this, is not going to want to purchase the next generation Xbox™ home console, nor will they purchase any of Microsoft's games. This is HUGE. You can laugh all you want, but Microsoft has alienated an entire market with this move.

Microsoft, publicly apologize and cancel 'always online' for the next generation Xbox™ home console or you can kiss your business goodbye.

good enough? :)


I loled hard thanks man
 

hirokazu

Member
Oh wow, I can't believe the whole "sweet billy" thing ended up being substantiated by Adam Orth himself on GAF! I was taking that whole bit with a big grain of salt because it seemed kinda ludicrous.
 
This:

f3dfd90664c2881dc354320a1210ef81.jpg


Reminded me of this:

2057661299_2df80eb3fd.jpg


Arrogant assholes on Twitter apparently like this pose/look.

what is this? Why would you even bring this up?
 

Replicant

Member
Wow, I just woke up and found out that this thing is now all over the internet and news. We're actually mentioned in the Escapist news sizzle? Holy Mackerel!
 

silenttwn

Member
oh come on. are the personal attacks really necessary? attack the guy's idiotic views, not what he chose as his profile pic.

I don't agree in personally attacking the guy, but he's done some douchey things. This isn't the only time Orth's trolled online. He messed with a bunch of Weezer fans once at allthingsweezer.com, being condescending much like he was on Twitter.
 

Spongebob

Banned
Was this posted?

bkilian BD3



Playing the game without the disc in the drive. If the amount of whining we see every time a 2 or more disc game gets released is any indication, this is a _huge_ benefit. Heck, as I recall, there was months of whining because you couldn't eject the disc tray remotely.

But let's get serious here for a second. They don't need always-online for DRM. The Steam model uses online activation, and doesn't require always online. So let's get it straight: always-online is not a DRM thing. You can lock down piracy perfectly well with one-time codes and online activation, which only requires a connection the first time you start a game. In fact, that would even work for not requiring the disc in the drive.

Always online is a feature that developers can rely on being there, something they cannot do with a current console, or even PC. Like the hard drive in the PS3, or analog triggers on the controller. Requiring always-online is telling the developer: "Don't be afraid to incorporate features that rely on an internet connection, we will guarantee it is there". Things like a RTS game that uses google maps as it's terrain engine, or persistent online worlds, or integrating an ARG into the gameplay. Consider Ubisoft's Watch_Dogs with a modification of the game phoning your actual phone and interacting with you as if you're in the game world.

It's the next logical step in gaming. We can quibble about whether now is too soon, but it's going to happen regardless, if not this coming generation, the next one.


I think it's very good explained.
If you read the Kotaku article then you would realize that this is not how MS is implementing this.

With Durango you have to be connected to the internet at all times to play games or use applications, when you disconnect from the internet then you will be given a 3 minute window to keep playing offline. After those three minutes then a network troubleshooter pops up and your game or application is suspended.

Edit: Response to Bkilian
 
See, that is why I'm asking if anyone has considered this a bit of an overreaction. The anger over his anti-consumer BS stance is PERFECTLY FINE (IMO). It's total shit, I agree. But you guys know how the internet works, this guy is probably getting death threats and shit because of this too, and the personal attacks are unwarranted.
People shouldn't really be worked up about the "friend" tweets anymore. That I agree with. But this defiantly should be a lesson to other employees about what not to do on social media.
Social media seems brings the worst out of people. And that can sadly cost you your job.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
oh come on. are the personal attacks really necessary? attack the guy's idiotic views, not what he chose as his profile pic.

I think that, by holding their respective views, both of those guys in the pictures are arrogant assholes that lack empathy. I just found it to be a funny coincidence that they also happen to share a very similar look.

You're right that it has no bearing on the discussion though and was definitely inappropriate. I've gone back and edited it out.
 

Boss Man

Member
A game that used live-google earth data could just run off the old data until you go online again. Sure, maybe you're not getting the truest live data, but you are getting real data.

Watch Dogs could just have that feature while you are connected. Some people may not want grief callers?
Also, I'll post again in case it gets overlooked:

You can have always-online games on a system that does not require always-online.

He mentioned PC. Diablo, SimCity.


If you want to have your games on the hard drive without switching discs, you can download them and accomplish the same thing. The only 'gain' here is that discs are meaningless beyond installation, so you can accomplish the same thing as above by buying a disc and installing instead of downloading and installing. Yay, the future.
 

Hydrargyrus

Member
I don't know, but I wouldn't expect for MS to change all that has been planing during, at least, 2 years because Adam's Tweets and all the internet blowout...
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
did that guy just dig a grave for both him & ms.....Wow
 

hirokazu

Member
Also, I'll post again in case it gets overlooked:

You can have always-online games on a system that does not require always-online.

He mentioned PC. Diablo, SimCity.


If you want to have your games on the hard drive without switching discs, you can download them and accomplish the same thing. The only 'gain' here is that discs are meaningless beyond installation, so you can accomplish the same thing as above by buying a disc and installing instead of downloading and installing. Yay, the future.
I'm not sure if we'll even reach requiring multiple discs for a single game on PS4/Durango since they both use Blu-ray anyway. Only games that go anywhere near the BD capacity limit are those with a ton of FMV and uncompressed assets.
 

SkyOdin

Member
People want him fired?

Why?

I'm not certain if anyone in particularly is actually asking him to be fired. Rather, this kind of blunder is the sort of thing companies often fire people over. I think most people are just expecting him to be fired, not demanding he be fired.
 

Boss Man

Member
I'm not sure if we'll even reach requiring multiple discs for a single game on PS4/Durango since they both use Blu-ray anyway. Only games that go anywhere near the BD capacity limit are those with a ton of FMV and uncompressed assets.
I think the notion has more to do with disc switching between different games, which I think (and apparently you do too) is a pretty minor thing to be on about.

And again, you can accomplish the same exact thing by going digital. Only difference is buying a disc (which are now all required to be install then trash) vs. downloading data (while physical discs work as they do now) to do it. Both of them are apparently going to allow 'immediate' access to the game.
 

Kyoufu

Member
I'm not certain if anyone in particularly is actually asking him to be fired. Rather, this kind of blunder is the sort of thing companies often fire people over. I think most people are just expecting him to be fired, not demanding he be fired.

Well I hope he doesn't lose his job over this.
 

Spottty

Neo Member
K, I havnt read all the pages so maybe this was brought up already.

Could this be a MS "any publicity is good publicity" thing?

Like get lots of people talking about the console before the announcement. Now tons of people will tune in to watch it. Then announce that there is no always online.

Try and steal any hype from PS4?

Just seams like such a weird move this early. I could see it after this console but not this gen.
 

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
I'm not certain if anyone in particularly is actually asking him to be fired. Rather, this kind of blunder is the sort of thing companies often fire people over. I think most people are just expecting him to be fired, not demanding he be fired.
This thread has had a damn fair share of people saying "he should be fired" and "I hope he gets fired."
 

UberTag

Member
Wow, I just woke up and found out that this thing is now all over the internet and news. We're actually mentioned in the Escapist news sizzle? Holy Mackerel!
In a perfect world, this thread and its impact on the global stage over the past 24 hours would be the capper to the GTTV documentary on NeoGAF.
 

MaulerX

Member


Ok. I thought the:

"...do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products..."


sounded a bit like debunking. I mean, if what they have already in place is "customer centric" then I don't see them adding always online DRM as continuing that trend.
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
I wasn't around the last gen-->current gen transition. Was it* worse back then?

* the console war

Kaz's get a second job comment, and about everything about Sony's 2006 E3 conference was harped on a whole lot. It was a lot of fun.

I was waiting till we got to have that kind of fun again for this generation switch, and it looks like we're finally having it. We still need Microsoft having an embarrassing E3 in order to completely match it.
 

Replicant

Member

On a hindsight, after catching up I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't moved beyond news spread. Although there seems to be some LOLs to be had in the form of Aegis stuff, I was hoping for a denial from MS but I guess that's not happening anytime soon.
 
On a hindsight, after catching up I'm a bit disappointed that we haven't moved beyond news spread. Although there seems to be some LOLs to be had in the form of Aegis stuff, I was hoping for a denial from MS but I guess that's not happening anytime soon.

You set the bar too high man.
 

Boss Man

Member
Ok. I thought the:

"...do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products..."


sounded a bit like debunking. I mean, if what they have already in place is "customer centric" then I don't see them adding always online DRM as continuing that trend.
Pretty positive that refers to #dealwithit and "The place you live in sucks." While "we haven't announced anything." refers to always-online.
 

jtb

Banned
I think that, by holding their respective views, both of those guys in the pictures are arrogant assholes that lack empathy.

I don't think he's an arrogant asshole who lacks empathy. He's just a guy doing his job. It's no surprise that the consumer and the producer of a product will not always see eye to eye—that's not lacking in empathy or arrogance, that's capitalism. Frankly, I think an idea like that would be disastrous (I mean, how many people have broadband? Certainly in the US, you're cutting out a potentially large chunk of users), but they'll pay for that when the console bombs. If the product is shit, then it's up to the consumer to vote with their wallet.
 

Protome

Member
This thread has had a damn fair share of people saying "he should be fired" and "I hope he gets fired."

Some people get personally offended when someone who works for a big company has some kind of opinion that differs from theirs and somehow think that should be a fireable offence.

The big thing about this story is of course "Someone in decent standing at MS is pretty open about thinking a console should be always online" to help feed the rumours that the Durango is always online. The guy's poor analogies and jokes with his friend are funny, but I really don't get the people who freaked out over them.
 
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