Microsoft Apologizes For Cavalier 'Always-Online' DRM Tweets 236
Adam Orth, creative director of Microsoft Studios, on Thursday tweeted that "doesn't get" objections to DRM schemes that require always-on internet connection to play console games. An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft on Friday released an official statement regarding the tweets: 'We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter.'" I can't help reading those tweets in the voice of Sterling Archer.
"We are very sorry if you are offended..." (Score:5, Insightful)
"...but we're still making it always-on anyway. Fuck you. Sorry."
Ah yes, the "the customer centric approach" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indy Games (Score:4, Insightful)
Coming soon to a console/computer near me.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
Some Microsoft guy made some comments thorugh personal channels
Not just "some Microsoft guy". He's creative director at Microsoft's video game division. If you think his opinion is irrelevant or atypical, you're delusional.
Re:Archer? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the always-on thing is required for the Xbox720, effectively Microsoft are saying "we don't care if you can't use your product you purchased from us because of a hundred possible reasons". Moving house can mean a month of downtime to get internet connectivity back up, nope, can't play games during that month. Recently an Australian telephone exchange burned down in Warrnambool - the entire area had no internet connectivity for a few weeks - yep, no gaming during that time either. A tree took out my phone line and Telstra took 2 weeks to get it repaired - yep, no gaming during that time. These are just the examples I can quickly think of.
We currently own 67 Xbox 360 games in this house, and have two of the consoles (one for my wife and I and one for our kids). If having the internet permanently connected for the purposes of DRM is a requirement of the Xbox 720, I guarantee we will purchase exactly zero consoles and games for that generation.
Re:Non-apology (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely agree with you. But I'm also not really sure what they need to apologize for. An employee stated an opinion on the net.
true, if said employee is a low level grunt, but when that employee is high level management, don't you think that changes things?
Re:Archer? (Score:5, Insightful)
The reaction to his posts, however, are skin to the Christian conservatives reactions to Cesar Chavez on Google. The people fucking bitching the loudest.. NEVER FUCKING LOG OFF. It doesn't make their core point wrong, but assigning "burning contempt" to a guy fucking around with his friend in twitter is hubris, hyperbole, and hyprocrisy that only normally comes from people with an extreme politcal agenda.
Seriously. People need to fucking GROW UP. IF, and I state again, IF, Microsoft is stupid enough to require an always on connection, guess what? Flame the hell out of them. Frankly, they'll deserve it. But the shit I saw made up about a guy on Reddit and random other sites.. because a bunch of self righteous, outrage point seeking entitled assholes wanted to burn down someone that.. they FUCKING DISAGREED WITH. Makes me goddamn sick.
Re:Archer? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Archer? (Score:2, Insightful)
(3) Slashdot's advertising money comes from Microsoft, Apple, Facebook et al, and they see the Linux aricles purely as an opportunity to smear competition.
It's not like there's ever much positive said here about FOSS. It's all just sly astroturfing and FUD.
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
This wasn't some random drone, some low level programmer, whose input and decision plays no role whatsoever. This was the creative director. If ANYONE'S input in stuff like that is important, it is his.
The mere fact that this was NOT some "official" fart but actually a decision maker making a (from a purely company politically point of view) "stupid" remark says 100 times more than any "official" press release.
Re:Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't see the following tweets until Major Nelson put out the apology, and I was rather horrified by the way Adam Orth expresses himself to a potential customer. Still, I am not sure kicking someone is the right way to go, but I do think they need to give at least the management some media training and make sure that everyone is aware of a company media policy. So many people are ignorant of how the internet ecosystem works and how things spread.
Personally, I refrain myself from publicly commenting on matters regarding the organization where I work. We have people whose job is to take care of these matters. When I see something I can tell them, say what I think and let them decide the correct course of action. I am entitled to my opinion, but that doesn't mean that I need to express it at all times. I know that my word might be taken for the official position and that might not be true, anyway I am not paid to comment on my employers decisions.
Yesterday I summed up some of my thoughts in the matter: http://mzomborszki.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/how-to-be-an-insensitive-clod/ [wordpress.com].
Re:Archer? (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree about the need for folks to do a head-check before reacting to something said off-the-cuff, but there's one sticking point... ...why did he use Twitter to verbally horse around with a buddy on such a touchy-assed subject? I mean, there are many, many less public means of doing that.
I play Devil's Advocate on a lot of subjects. I work with fellow sysadmins and developers, and I often say some incredibly crazy/provocative things (err, even at work) - usually to force someone into thinking through a blockage. But, what I don't do is use a publicly-viewable means to do any of that.
One other bit I should mention; it's not that the loudest gripers are bitching about the always-on aspect per se, but the unstated-yet obvious reason it torques them is that they want to retain control over the stuff they paid for. The always-on requirement implies that they won't have that control. When I was younger (I know...) I'd play Quake (1, 2 and 3, usually a CTF mod) at all hours, and between that plus goofing off on USENET, I practically never logged off.
I don't game anymore (well, almost never), but the very thought of keeping a connection open just to get permission to use a product I paid for? Hell, my skin crawls at the thought.
Little wonder the more passionate gamers are up in arms at the idea.
Just food for thought.
Re:The summary doesn't mention (Score:5, Insightful)
If you own MS shares and the launch a console with an "always on" requirement - SELL. Don't even wait for the end of the press conference.
It's not the reaction of the slashdot market you need to worry about. Will we cry foul over such a requirement? Yes. Will we be less likely to buy the console as a result? Yes. Are we a drop in the ocean? No.
Rather, it's the huge "hinterland" demographic, particularly outside the coastal US and Western Europe, that you should be concerned about. If you think that internet connections are as reliable and "always on" as the electricity supply in most of the world, then think again. Personally, I'm pretty lucky; I live in the suburbs of London and have a pretty meaty 120mbit downstream 12 mbit upstream connection with no monthly cap. But even here, reliability isn't perfect - in the 12 months since I moved into this place, I've had two serious broadband faults; that's actually better than the reliability of my old 6mbit downstream 0.5mbit upstream connection in my old place.
Get outside of the major cities and, even in the US and Western Europe, broadband connections become a lot patchier. Moreover, people who don't fall quite so far towards the nerdy end of the spectrum as I do are more likely to be on cheaper broadband packages with restrictive monthly caps; an always on device which is doing anything more than pinging status back and forward could be a major inconvenience for them.
Oh, and then you get some pretty developed parts of the world, particularly out around the Pacific Rim, where home broadband is still fairly limited (sometimes associated with ultra-high-density housing) and most net activity takes place in internet cafes.
If MS announces an always-on console, you can take that as a declaration that it's not interested in competing in those markets.
If the always-on connection is linked to restrictions on the use of used games, then you can take that as a declaration that it's not interested in competing in ANY markets.
There's a lot to dislike about Sony's record. Seriously - a lot (do I even need to say this on slashdot?). But thanks to unbelievable levels of stupidity from both MS and Nintendo, the PS4 is heading to win the next round of the console wars by default, simply by following a low-key, low-risk approach (PC-like architecture, no always-on, no used-games-restrictions, no expensive tablet controller pushing developers into territory they don't want to bother with).
Loyal "consumers" (Score:5, Insightful)
The most important thing I've noticed, in this whole charade, is this:
"loyal consumers"
You are not citizens anymore. Or customers.
You are consumers, please get used to it.
Re:Archer? (Score:5, Insightful)
"I have no interest in purchasing games with an expiration date."
Although in reality you always have. Any game constructed for a specific platform has a limited lifespan. And that's all games.
With the brilliant advances in emulation recently, I find it hard to believe that an always on server couldn't be emulated just as easily as the hardware of an 80s arcade machine. Just saying.
I get the feeling that you seem to be engaging in a from of double-think.
Just so I get it right: You say that all games have an expiration date, as the hardware/software they run on will not be available permanently. You equate that to the identical impermanence of the remote servers in always-on games. Then you say that the latter can be emulated quite easily, just like the old hardware is.
But does that not mean that your first point is totally moot? Because as long as you have reliable emulation, offline games do not have an expiration date; especially if the emulators are Open-Source and thus easily (depending in the code) convertible between platforms.
I for one strictly believe that one of the very first software tools that is going to be written for the first off-the-shelf quantum computer will be an SNES emulator.
Always-on-games are a different beast though. Because instead of writing an emulator for a whole platform, thus covering almost all titles for it at the same time; you need to write a completely new emulator for every single always-on game, since they're all fundamentally different.
MS doesn't get it #dealwithit (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I don't get the drama around Microsoft not getting it. Microsoft has been nothing but fail recently. It's the world we live in. #dealwithit
Windows phone
Surface Tablets
Always on DRM
Charging $$$ to watch your paid for Netflix account on XBox
Windows 8
I wonder what they will add this year to the fail list
Re:Suddenly OUYA is starting to look pretty good.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Sadly OUYA does not ship with any meaningful hardware in it. Already-obsolete Tegra 3 that has OpenGL ES 2.0 level hardware (ie. DX9 in PC terms) paired with far too little RAM and Android OS...
It competes with cell phones and tablets in performance. And crappy ones at that. I'm sure it'll run Angry Birds but people will be up for a disappointment when they notice that ten year old real consoles trounce it in performance and there are already a veritable army of tablets and phones(!) that do graphics a lot better.
A nice toy, priced somewhat fairly considering the performance, incapable of running any real games.