Major Nelson: Official Statement on what was said yesterday (aka "always-on connection rumors"

[slowmo]

Aielyn said:

Machiavellian said:
Even if this twitter thing did not get out of hand, MS would not have made a comment on it but instead either fired Orth or put him under a media blackout to keep his mouth shut.  It would not matter if his statements were truth or opinion.  The only reason you even have an apology is that Orth made rude comments to people so it required a response.

 You still keep missing the point that MS does not make any statements on something that does not exist and they will not make a statement until they make a reveal.  Trying to read between the lines is just creating your own opinion of what said but in reality it doesn't get any deeper than the Nextbox doesn't exist until MS says it does.

Once again, there is no reason why they would have to say a single word about an upcoming console in order to put out the fire that Orth set. It is trivial to put people's minds at ease by talking about Microsoft's perspective and opinion, rather than about what is coming. But they can't use this method unless what they say is actually accurate - that is, if MS aren't putting such a restriction into their system, then they can do it; but if they are making their next console always-online DRM, then using this method would backfire massively, for obvious reasons.

And any even half-competent PR person would see this. So if there wasn't any truth in the rumour, MS would be able to easily dismiss them, in a way that would be so trivial and uneventful that people would have forgotten about the events entirely by the time of the official unveiling, while preventing more such rumours.

So tell me - do you honestly think that Microsoft's PR people are so incompetent that they wouldn't be able to see this?

You're wrong and don't have the knowledge or experience to make that statement.