Creative Director at MS Studios Shows Support for “Always Online” Console, with Some Rather Dodgy Comments

Lately, the rumour about the Xbox 360’s successor requiring an internet connection 24/7, keeps coming up. One person that has no problem with the idea of an always online video game console is Adam Orth. Creative Director at Microsoft Studios, Orth recently tweeted:

“Sorry, I don’t get the drama around having an “always on” console. Every device now is “always on”. That’s the world we live in. #dealwithit”

Rather abrupt and out of the blue seeing as there has been no confirmation on the next Xbox requiring this, or even an announcement for the console, at all!

This obviously made BioWare designer Manveer Heir a little peeved as he brought up SimCity and Diablo III as examples where the “always online” concept didn’t work. He also suggested that everyone in the United States doesn’t have high speed internet – name-checking Janesville, WI and Blacksburg, VA. To that, Orth dismissively replied:

“Why on earth would I live there?”

Orth has since protected his account because of the obvious backlash, but a Reddit user screengrabbed the conversation.

Some people find it difficult to understand that the entire world doesn’t live in London, New York, Paris, San Francisco, or [insert major city, here]. There are some people who live out in the sticks, pay a ridiculous amount of money on the best internet available to them, yet could never conceivably own a video game console that is always-online because the “best” Internet available for them could be pretty awful, in the big scheme of things. An even worse thought for Mr. Orth is that there are people out there that don’t have the Internet, AT ALL!

Of course, this isn’t confirmation that the Durango/neXtbox/Infinity/720/Loop/whatever will require an Internet connection, but if it does, I feel like there will be a few unhappy campers on the 360 side of things that may make the jump over to PlayStation.