Terminate421 said:
As a possiblity, but I personally think Don Matterick felt like giving everyone the finger.
That's been my theory on the matter as well.
NO ONE can be that unapologetically bad at handling press, especially considering he was the president. For god's sake he flat out told people NOT to buy his product with the infamous "We do have an offline console, it's called the 360. Just stick with that" comment. I think he knew that he was going to be leaving MS, maybe his contract or something was going to expire and MS had no intention of renewing it. Apparently this happened on bad terms because it seemed as though he was actively trying to sabotage Xbox's and MS's reputation with every interview he did.
And now he's the CEO of Zynga...I still find that to be fucking hilarious.
OT: Why bother backing away from the policies? Because it sure as hell couldn't hurt?
There were pretty much riots in the streets when it was announced that the XBone was going to have fuck-you-in-the-ass DRM. Giving MS the benefit of the doubt, they GREATLY underestimated the number of offline gamers/gamers with unstable connections. When people are opening salad bars outside your E3 press conference so other people can have a place to buy tomatoes to throw at you, you know you've done something terribly wrong. So you listen to what people are complaining about and make some cuts. "Gamers are wanting to crucify us for putting DRM onto a console. As it is the XBone is looking to crash and burn in a way that hasn't been seen since the Dreamcast." "Well shit, get rid of the DRM, then."
Now they at least have a chance to win back a portion of the market. I'm still not getting one, though, as long as it comes connected to a Kinect. Microsoft can go fuck itself with their little advertisement spy-cam. I find it funny how they said "The lesson we've learned is that consumers value choice, so we're going to give it to them." And yet you still have no choice but to have a Kinect. "Well you can just turn it off if you really don't like it." Then why the fuck should I pay an extra $100 for something I have absolutely no intention of using?