No he wouldn't have.

He's associated with Microsoft Games Studio.  He's not associated with the Xbox team.  They aren't even in close physical proximity to each other on Microsoft's campus.  Microsoft Games Studio develops games for a broad range of devices, from PCs, to mobile devices, to consoles.  What development team he is a director of isn't mentioned.

The last Xbox game he worked on, as a creative director, was Star Wars Kinect, however before that he worked on a PS Vita game, as well as Facebook games.

My guess is he won't make it through.  He's pretty low on the totem pole, and expendable.  Fortunately he wasn't still with LucasArts, but unfortunately he opened his mouth at the wrong time.

I do not see why its so hard for people to understand that MS will not speak about anything nextBox related until they actually REVEAL the console.  This not a very hard concept to understand.  Just because the net want answers is not going to make MS change their plans or release any info until they are ready.  

I higly doubt that MS only made the console for always online as that would be a silly design.  As someone noted before, its probably something that can be easily patched in or out.

The Adam Orth being the scapegoat for MS to see what the reation of Only Online console doesn't sound like a good plan.  Instead MS would have used a 3rd party outlet to test the waters instead of an employee at MS.  It's even less plausible if the employee was rude and commented in a way that makes MS look bad.  I would probably buy that Ideal if the guy only had reasonable dicussions about online only instead of statements that are designed to piss people off.

The key is that it doesn't matter what MS is testing as far as always online or what the dev units are setup to do, its the actual consumer product that matters.  I can definitely see MS making the dev units online only because they want to track those devs, what they do and who they are.  A consumer device is something totally different

I am aging myself here but I worked at MS when windows 95 came out.  I seen people get fired over just posting in forums using their MS email address.  If people think that a director who pisses of people on his own twitter account that makes national news will not be under the firing line then a lot of you have not worked for big coporations like MS.  This guy getting fired does not confirm anything.  Him getting fired is because he tweeted about something that does not exist, made a big stink of it and cause MS to look bad no matter what he said.  Him being a director is even worst because people will see this as an official statement, stance and position of MS which might not be the case.

Even if this whole thing did not blow up, MS is very strict on employees making any statements concerning anything MS, their partners or competitors.  The reason why is exactly what we see here.  People will assume this is MS speaking.  They will assume this is MS stance.  People will assume this is how MS works based on one person opinion.  You only have to view this and many other threads to see that people believe that online only is true based on Mr. Orth personal tweets.

I'm not sure about that. It could be considered breach of contract with him releasing any details about the new console, true or false, joke or not. Any information given could very easily be a breach of contract.

Plus if it were my business I would get rid of him due to tarnishing his image and that of the business.

I was one of 250 people invited to Redmond from the 100,000 in the Windows 95 Beta.  You might be older, but only slightly.

Yeah, I actually started working in the Charlotte NC office as support for Windows for Workgroups, Win 95 then NT.

You're clearly not understanding. Nothing in what MS actually said even implies any inaccuracy regarding what Orth implied about MS's next console. What they're saying is "we don't consider people living in backwater areas to be idiots who need to move". It's all very PR-speak, making it sound like they're rejecting what he said when they're actually rejecting only the anti-consumer attitude of how he said it.

So when I summarise their response, I put it exactly as I did - "Adam Orth's comments on Twitter were inappropriate, and we have no comment on the actual content of the twitter comments". They have nothing to say about his actual point, they only take issue with the attitude with which he said it, and the fact that his attitude makes MS look bad. Remember, "the actual content" of the twitter comments wasn't "don't live in backwater areas", but rather "always online is a good thing, and shouldn't be denigrated any more than a vacuum cleaner always needing power".

In PR, it's always what they *don't* say that is key. The failure to actually say anything about the idea of always-online consoles, when that's what most people are reacting to (not the poor way in which Adam Orth promoted it), is a much louder statement than anything they actually did say.

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?