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

Machiavellian on 13 April 2013
Aielyn said:
Machiavellian said:

How can you put out the fire Orth set when you have to make a statement about a product that does not exist.  I just do not understand your reasoning.  It's trivial to you concerning the issue but its totally different on the corporate level.  Why would MS say anything about a product they have not released, that is not in the market if they already have a plan to deliver that message which is already probably costing them millions in prep.  Why would they spoil that work just to set YOUR mind at ease.  Once MS makes a state saying the Online only for the next xbox is false they just undermined their reveal, it opens up a can of words that potentially derail all the money they probably is spending and have spent on their reveal.

I addressed this in my FIRST post in this thread. Here's how it would be done:

"The comments made by Adam Orth on Twitter are not representative of the opinion of Microsoft. We here at Microsoft do not consider the practice of always-online restrictions at the hardware level to be appropriate to the videogame industry. We view all consumers, irrespective of location or internet connectivity, to be equally important."

Not a word said about any sort of product, yet puts out the fire completely. Establishes that future consoles from them won't have always-online DRM, without ever mentioning any console, and yet leaves the door wide open to games on future consoles being always-online. And it does all of this in a way that also avoids any pretense of there not being a new console being prepared for announcement, and thus does not patronise its potential customers.


Weather MS will or will not have online only console, your PR statement would lock MS into something they may or may not do this gen or any gen.  The thing is why would they make such a statement.  Even Sony isn't crazy enough to make a statement like that.  That statement comes from someone who wants the industry to think this way but a business would be crazy to issue something like that because if things change and this is they way things go, well people would be bringing up that statement at every interview.



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Aielyn on 13 April 2013
slowmo said:

They had nothing to reject though as they've announced nothing and they've clearly stated they don't coment on rumour.

If they'd said "we do not comment on rumours", that would be one thing (although it would have failed to have any impact on the situation - the backlash wouldn't be addressed at all, it just wouldn't make things any worse). What they said, though, was "we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter". That isn't the same thing.

Paraphrasing, what they said was "we're not ready to announce details just yet". But rejection of something is not a feature announcement. And like I said, all they had to do was reject the IDEA of an always-online restricted console, not the specific idea that their own console would have always-online restrictions.



Aielyn on 13 April 2013
Machiavellian said:

Weather MS will or will not have online only console, your PR statement would lock MS into something they may or may not do this gen or any gen.  The thing is why would they make such a statement.  Even Sony isn't crazy enough to make a statement like that.  That statement comes from someone who wants the industry to think this way but a business would be crazy to issue something like that because if things change and this is they way things go, well people would be bringing up that statement at every interview.

If they're not doing it this coming gen, then saying it doesn't harm them this gen - that's my point. As for future generations, it's easily addressed, since it uses the concept of an "opinion". Meaning, if things change in the future, they just go "After further investigation, we at Microsoft have decided that we are able to implement an always-online restriction in a reasonable and fair manner."

And besides that, always-online restrictions at a hardware level is a stupid idea, and will remain a stupid idea in perpetuity. MS rejecting the idea completely would be a good thing.