Rumour: Always-Online Xbox Rumour Killed By Internal Microsoft Memo!

A rumour to kill a rumour, always an exciting and difficult way to start any news article! Yet that seems to be exactly what we have to deal with today. But with sources like these, this one is too hard to to ignore.

An email has allegedly been sent around to Microsoft’s employees, debunking the rumour that the next generation Xbox will require an always online, or constant internet connection, which to this day I still think was a stupid rumour anyway, given that there is a large portion of the Xbox market that doesn’t have a reliable internet connection, especially so in developing markets, but I digress.

The email in question has been discovered by Ars Technica, who in themselves have been a good source in the past and have a reputation of their own to protect. The email was said to be sent to “all full-time employees working on the next Xbox” and contains the following text:

“Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today’s Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should ‘just work’ regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game.”

So that’s that, but its not conclusive and many have been quick to forget that “online checks” have been prevalent for some time now, yet people fail to realise that they’re already pandering to the cause of big brother with their game purchases. The “online pass” system has been used for games such as Battlefield, Mass Effect and many others and this in its self is an always online DRM, you need the code to play, but the section of the game that requires the code is online multiplayer, where as single player would work without. It stands to reason that developers or more precisely publishers would want a more unified system, much like the serial key system that has been used on the PC for years, but of course, this is just my speculation.

Features such as Apps may require always connected internet, LoveFilm, iPlayer need access, but only when in use. As do many modern games, even blu-ray discs have internet features, so you can take a lot of the original rumour with a pinch of salt because one way or another, next-gen consoles will benefit greatly with an always on connection, but fundamentally, it would be foolish to think Microsoft would stop you from playing your games without an Internet connection, unless the game required it for multiplayer.

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