Well that's certainly good news:
According to an internal Microsoft e-mail sent to all full-time employees working on the next Xbox, "Durango [the codename for the next Xbox] is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet." It continues, "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."
Peter Bright of Ars Technica goes on to point out in the article that this doesn't necessarily exclude the possibility that the games will have to be installed online beforehand (which means that online second-hand game blocking isn't out of the picture either) and that "watching live TV" would support the rumor that the box can be hooked up to a cable box.
Personally I find this rumor more intriguing than most - firstly because it identifies a very specific source that could be easily falsified and secondly because it isn't written like a memo. It's written like a press release. It's as if Microsoft intended it to be leaked almost immediately - which is only reinforced further by it supposedly being a mass email which would make it impossible for them to track down the leaker even if they tried.
This makes perfect sense to me. I've been wondering for a long time why Microsoft hasn't gone out and put a number of less than flattering rumors about the Nextbox to bed - if this is their way of doing it, it's not a bad one. It keeps people talking and excited by it being a rumor and it defuses the risk that most people will just sit around waiting for a confirmation or denial of online-only at the press conference and ignore everything else.
Sure, we'll (hopefully) know for certain in two weeks time. But for the time being, this is good news indeed.
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