His courage is admirable, but unfortunately misplaced. His job was to test next-gen consoles. It shouldn't have been surprising that he'd find bugs. And since he was a tester, he likely saw far more bugs than most end-users, simply because he was looking for them.
I empathize with his frustration with Microsoft. He probably felt like they were not listening to his reports, or if they were, that they were focusing on problems that he believed to be less important. However, as a game developer, I understand why it can take a very long time to respond to a playtester's bug report. In the game industry, you're constantly working on improvements. There really is no downtime. So, tester identifies bug; tester reports bug; manager schedules bugfix; developer finishes what he's doing; developer reproduces the bug; developer fixes the bug; developer does a "programmer test" to verify that the bug is actually fixed; code is checked in, which is queued to be deployed; and finally, the bugfix is deployed back to the original tester. It can take anywhere from two days to two months for certain bugfixes, through no fault of the process. (A process like that is inevitable for codebases that are millions of lines of code.) And once you throw in the fact it is probably difficult to deploy new code to consoles, and also that the testers aren't in the same building as the developers, that process can probably take quite a long time from the point of view of the tester.
So that said, I don't understand why he felt it was a good idea to be a whistleblower in this case. There really is no big scandal. If a console fails, Microsoft will replace it.
Also, I assume he signed a non-disclosure agreement, which he brazenly violated.
I think you're being overly apologetic for a large company that released a very shoddy product.
You're right that there are (sometimes) good reasons for big development projects to have long bug-fixing cycles. Nevertheless, there's very little justification for software updates that brick hardware. There's even less justification for a defensive corporate posture when it happens.
I don't know if this guy's actions are right or wrong, but I'm fairly confident that Microsoft can defend itself, and doesn't need our help. Moreover, considering how much money Microsoft is dumping into inane television ads to improve their brand image, this kind of behavior seems counter-productive. Perhaps if they spent a few of those ad (and legal) dollars making better products, instead of arguing with their users (and suing their employees), they wouldn't need get Bill Gates to do the robot on national television.
Whilst McDonalds actually "won" in the end, the case enabled the high-profile exposure of a lot of internal documents and secrets. Ended up being a massive embarrassment and not at all worth the small victory.
He wasn't a Microsoft employee.. he was a contractor, who Microsoft finds more expendable. The Xbox team seems especially secretive and is no stranger to firing contractors who violate their NDAs:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/146115_blogger30.html
There is no way I would hire him. You hire test engineers to find bugs. Just because a bug is found does not always mean it will get fixed (for many reasons). This can be very upsetting. But, it is a reality of development. The last thing I would want is to read about unfixed bugs in some news story.
It's a lot like having your lawyer or psychologist telling all, but about your company instead of yourself. It's unethical.
It isn't up to someone in QA to determine what a company's product direction is. And no, I wouldn't hire someone who violated an NDA unless it was a serious life-threatening reason to disclose.
I empathize with his frustration with Microsoft. He probably felt like they were not listening to his reports, or if they were, that they were focusing on problems that he believed to be less important. However, as a game developer, I understand why it can take a very long time to respond to a playtester's bug report. In the game industry, you're constantly working on improvements. There really is no downtime. So, tester identifies bug; tester reports bug; manager schedules bugfix; developer finishes what he's doing; developer reproduces the bug; developer fixes the bug; developer does a "programmer test" to verify that the bug is actually fixed; code is checked in, which is queued to be deployed; and finally, the bugfix is deployed back to the original tester. It can take anywhere from two days to two months for certain bugfixes, through no fault of the process. (A process like that is inevitable for codebases that are millions of lines of code.) And once you throw in the fact it is probably difficult to deploy new code to consoles, and also that the testers aren't in the same building as the developers, that process can probably take quite a long time from the point of view of the tester.
So that said, I don't understand why he felt it was a good idea to be a whistleblower in this case. There really is no big scandal. If a console fails, Microsoft will replace it.
Also, I assume he signed a non-disclosure agreement, which he brazenly violated.