I think that an aspect of the whole racial ASI issue is that the players handbook is supposed to be setting neutral. Having read it, I don't think that that's actually true and they clearly have the Forgotten Realms in mind, but they want it to be looked at as setting neutral. They want players to either grab a setting book or create their own setting. And I think that this change gives DMs freedom to do stuff with their settings more easily. After all, why should orcs be the same at EVERY table unless the DM goes to the trouble of reworking them personally? Perhaps the given updated changes could do more to each race something special to reflect their base physical differences, but the stat increases to me are the least flavorful part of the choice and are almost purely utilitarian.
Let me bring up the Scarred Lands campaign setting as a counterpoint. That setting has its own version of the base races, with a few exceptions. I like orcs as a player people in general, but I couldn't care less about half-orcs in the PHB, but I LOVE the orcs of scarred lands. Because they are written with a lot of interesting culture and background to them. They still had the +2 to strength, +1 constitution, but their interesting culture made me excited to build an orc wizard because of the unique way they view magic, so I wanted to play that out regardless.
