Xbox One-eighty, Adam Orth and online tyranny

http://media.edge-online.com/wp-cont...ne-chopped.jpgMicrosoft pulled an unprecedented 180-degree turn in the wake of Sony’s E3 conference, at which it was revealed that the PS4 would not only be cheaper, but also require neither an internet connection nor any fees for used games.

Not so long ago, arguing with someone online was as good a use of one’s time as phoning up a random stranger and shouting at them. Unfortunately, that’s not quite true anymore. The web may sometimes be an obnoxious voice-colony overrun by ear-piercing extremists, life-sucking idiots and attention seeking opinionheads, but it nevertheless carries a massive and growing influence. Developers of games consoles and software are now listening intently to those loud voices, and are even making extraordinary changes to their businesses in order to pacify detractors. In 2013, whining became the locomotive of history.Back in April, when ex-Microsoft creative director Adam Orth was swarmed with death threats across his email, Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as his mobile phone, those close to him suggested perhaps it was best to take the matter to the police.“People urged me to do this, but I never really considered it,” he said months later, during a speech at the Game Developers Conference. “I mean, how do you report the entire internet?”On April 4th, Orth had been browsing Twitter and noticed a new wave of anti-Microsoft sentiment creeping into his feed. The latest outrage was based on a then-unconfirmed report that the Xbox One (still unannounced at this point) would require an always-online internet connection to function.It was then, in the middle of the afternoon, that Orth decided to add his views to the outpouring of opinion with a 140-character message, in which he claimed he didn’t feel such a policy was controversial, before ending the tweet with the hashtag #dealwithit.Today he doesn’t deny this was a phenomenal mistake, not least because his Twitter bio showed he was speaking as a creative director at Microsoft Studios. For the hundreds of thousands of people who read it (and shared the screengrab) across Reddit, Twitter and NeoGAF, Orth’s offhand rejoinder was unofficial confirmation of an always-online Xbox. In the eyes of many, it also exemplified Microsoft’s aloofness in the face of a particularly volatile issue that had dominated discussion boards for months.

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