Aaron Greenberg, Chief of Staff for Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft, was shown Adam Orth’s tweets and his reply was really surprising.
One user tweeted at him saying, “Adam Orth is very insulting to your customers.” To which he replied, “Very sorry if you were offended, I don’t actually know who he is.”
That is something baffling because a creative director at Microsoft Game Studios is not a small position and Orth does have an impressive resume. He previously worked for Sony and Popcap, and has been working on an unannounced project at Microsoft.
He presumably knows about Xbox 720 based on his tweets, and considering this issue has been blown out of proportion and covered by every major media, it’s something that is a cause of concern for Microsoft.
"Very sorry if you were offended, I don't actually know who he is."
- Microsoft's Aaron Greenberg.
More importantly, Xbox fans who have supported the company for a long time are also against this move, and based on these tweets and the negative media coverage, Sony may not have to do anything to win over some customers.
It is also quite possible that Orth may get fired, as it usually happens in such circumstances, because he has insulted people (maybe a joke) who live in rural areas. It doesn’t matter if he was joking because people are going to take it seriously and it’s also sort of a “Hey, I don’t care attitude”.
It is also something that is disrespectful to people who don’t live in the US and Europe, because the most internet connections in Asia and the rest of the world except those countries I mentioned, will not easily support an always-online Xbox due to bandwidth limits and speed limits. Even in some regions in the US, such a thing just won’t fly, based on our interview here with PSN game Fuel Overdose creator.
As a Twitter user aptly put it, “A whole gaming community was offended. I’d suggest Orth keep his mouth shut in the future as rep for Microsoft.” Another user was also quite livid with Orth’s comments: “Basically this just told everybody to f off if you don’t live in a city. Making fun of peoples lifestyle now..”
This is what the problem is. The gaming community is not interested in an always-online Xbox because it presents a lot of issues like privacy concerns, and also makes the gameplay experience dependent on the ISP, and that feeling of paying for something and getting incomplete product in return is hard to shake of, because let’s face it; if you are bound by an external force to enjoy something you paid for, then you really didn’t get complete value for your money.
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