He was acting that way with his peers, though, at least at the start. His mistake, it seems, was responding to others at all. We all know Orth was not representing Microsoft with those comments.

If they cared about what we thought about the decision, they would have asked us. Surely, even, they already did focus testing under NDAs. Telling them WHY has no bearing on the years of planning and design and contracts that they have put into the device. If they failed to properly research the audience for their…

And their reaction to this has more than proven that to be an accurate assessment.

Of course the "if you don't like it, don't buy it" argument applies here - that's the height of the consumer's power in a capitalist market. All the complaining about Orth is frustrated people looking for someone to punish for their feigned offense - how dare he not politely sugar-coat the message that rural areas…

I would tell them they should probably buy a product that met their needs. I agree - anybody with any sort of corporate responsibility should simply avoid social media to avoid these sorts of situations. I was under the impression, though, that gamers wanted candid conversation with the industry, though, and this…

Outcry from the easily trolled, at least. Also, people were pretty obviously upset at the probable-truth of 'always-on,' no?

He wasn't addressing a specific customer or affecting any sort of representation of his company; it's more like overhearing a customer service rep's loud discussion with a coworker turn into an argument with some people in a bar. The only reason this is 'damaging' is because of the idiotic overreaction to it, not…

Well, don't think I'm any less passionate about rotoscoping!! I adore it. I think you're missing the point that it's not supposed to squash and stretch - it's not a cartoon, it's just animated. Rotoscoping does a terrible job of being cartoony, but that because that's not what it's for. The constraints of physical…

Yeah, they are adding lean-in and lean-back, too.

Maybe I've underestimated the sensitivity of the customer base, but this all seems way closer to people pretending to care about bullshit (a snide tweet? really??) because it's something mildly entertaining to affect a stance over and bitch about to distract themselves from remembering their perpetual march to the…

As I said to the other guy, it's more meaningful than 'Microsoft does not comment on rumors and speculation'

All I'm saying is that once we're not funneling information through corporate controlled messages, it's going to be in a form that's less pleasant to hear sometimes.

Again, it's not a press release, it's people talking honestly and openly - sometimes that can be pretty coarse.

I know! I'm gonna hold out for the planned 1080p and location tracking, but I'm dying to try out the dev kit!

I cannot wait for the consumer version! I've been salivating over the YouTube reaction videos since the dev kits started shipping.

If people were 'mad' because one of the hundreds of millions of people on Twitter was pithy towards them in the abstract, that's pretty pathetic. Am I now supposed to believe Microsoft - you know, commonly referred to basically everywhere for decades as 'M$' - was viewed as an kindly, empathic corporation, if only it…

Are our collective feelings really hurt if a dude at a company that makes a thing some of us like isn't nice to us? I assure you, worse things are said about us, as a whole, that aren't on posted on Twitter every single day, by the people that make all sorts of things we buy and use.

As it turns out, the customer's mindset is pretty easily swayed by marketing. The whole point of advertising is to convince the customer that what you're selling is already the right choice.

That's what I'm getting at - a constant level of zero-risk corporate formality is exactly the what this very site has called 'Gaming's Biggest Problem' - gamers don't get to complain that all they get is heavily-filtered marketing when, if they don't get that, they grab the torches and pitchforks.

Also acting like a 15 year old: caring about what tone somebody tweeted in. Being upset over the implications of an 'always-on' internet connection? I don't share that concern, but I can understand that. Being upset because somebody somewhere was dismissive on Twitter? Not so much. The content of the message is the…