At least not according to Arstechnica, who say they are quoting an internal Microsoft e-mail.

Source

-----------------------------

Microsoft: Next Xbox will work even when your Internet doesn’t

Scenarios that users expect to work offline will, in fact, work offline.

by Peter Bright - May 6 2013, 4:58pm WEDT

Should single-player games, Blu-ray playback, and live TV viewing be possible on a gaming console with no Internet connection? Most gamers would say "yes," but they have been worried that Microsoft feels differently; the next generation Xbox has been consistently rumored to require a permanent network connection.

It won't.

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."

The quotation also implicitly confirms another rumor: the next Xbox will sport an HDMI input, to allow cable boxes to be hooked up for live TV viewing. Our sources tell us that the console will be able to provide TV listings and similar information.

How far this offline support will extend still isn't clear. It could take the form of a fully offline mode akin to that on the Xbox 360 (insert optical disc, install game, play, all without an Internet connection) or it could be more like Steam (install and activate online but enable subsequent offline play once this has been done).

While one could argue that "installing a game" is one of the "scenarios" that gamers "expect to work" when offline, a more Steam-like approach would be consistent with rumors that the next Xbox will use its Internet connection to block installation of second hand games.

Still, though the next Xbox won't make everybody happy, it looks like fears that the console will be useless when your broadband goes down have been overblown.

-----------------------

I hope it's true.

Well that's a relief! I can't wait for everyone on the internet to pull a mea culpa over the fact that they were accusing an unannounced console of having unconfirmed restrictions! Surely it won't simply be forgotten for another entirely unwarranted, knee-jerk accusation!

We all knew the "always online" internet was going to be far less offensive than people were saying. The backlash against it was too strong. MS knew they needed to go back and scale down their plans.

I still wouldn't be surprised to see some sort of CD key you need to activate online once before a game will run.

Not "confirmed". As much as I've expressed distaste for always online, I believe I've always made sure to include "...but it's a rumor, so we'll see". And this goes the opposite way, too - a supposedly intercepted Microsoft e-mail doesn't prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt, though it is certainly hopeful.

If this is true, though, then it would imply that MS did, indeed, plan on making the console always online.

I agree, but at least it's a first positive message from Microsoft (if so) regarding the issue. That's nice after all the rumors of the past few months. I'm still waiting for the release before I draw real conclusions, but it does makes me cautiously optimistic.

This sucks, no more circle jerking

Damn, you beat me to it by five freaking minutes. Oh well, I'll just repeat what I said in my own thread:

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.

@believer258 I guess it depends on how highly you value Peter Bright as a secondary source. At least it's better than most "this anonymous person we can't name says this with no explanation of why he knows it" type of rumor. I guess it's possible that either Bright is pulling a fast one on us or someone is pulling one on him, but still: he is Ars Technica's Microsoft correspondent after all and appears to be a pretty productive one for Ars with a solid history.

The problem is that people have a really short attention span when it comes to info these days and are used to being fed constant tweets and updates. I think it's almost always going to create a bad situation when a company stays silent for so long like MS has.

They have been so adamant about keeping the secret of whether there even is a console (while EVERYONE knew there was one and are aware the developers have dev kits for it for a while already) that they couldn't just release a simple statement about this one way or the other while the internet was freaking out about it.

@oraknabo: To be fair the type of people reading about this always online stuff and keeping up with every durango based rumour is probably a very small percentage of the people who have bought the 360 and intend to buy it's next iteration. It probably only seemed larger to us since we all visit these gaming specific sites, though I do agree that this whole pretending like there is no new Xbox coming is getting kind of silly by now and causing a few more problems than it's worth.

There's been so much contradictory, unconfirmed information about the Durango that I think MS is now purposefully leaking misinformation to distract people from the real details while occupying the mindshare.

We're still two weeks out until the first real details should be announced and literally every details about the console has changed three times. I'm not even paying attention to them anymore.

The only message I take away from all these internal "leaks" is that if even half of them are true, MS is in complete disarray with the messaging of this console and all the idiots that messed up Windows 8 and the phone are working to screw up Xbox also.

Thank God. At least we could finally shut up about it soon. I bet we'll keep hearing about this DRM misconception a week after its announcement.

W--w-well uhh the new logo is STILL gay! A-and I bet it will have tons of ads, the new XBOX is terrible.

I don't know how much truth is in this, and I may end up eating my own words, but I think it would be insane to think that Microsoft would release a console that wouldn't be able to do anything without an online connection when statistics have shown that roughly %50 of their userbase doesn't even connect to XBOX Live as it is.

I still can't believe people would think this is true.

This. I am continually dumbfounded that people keep going on about how terribly terrible a thing it is but don't seem to get to the logical conclusion that maybe Microsoft might actually not do the terrible thing.

@grantheaslip: You'd think that, but there are still a ton of people that buy consoles and never hook them up to the internet, much less pay for a Gold subscription. In addition, a lot of sales also come from Europe where costs are radically different and there are very restrictive bandwidth caps.

We have come full circle where Microsoft is the devil again just like 1999 and people need a reason to vilify them in some way. Lord knows I don't think the newest dashboard is anything amazing but it's also not this awful piece of shit people make it out to be. I got used to it and now I can find things I want just as easily as before. Most importantly, when I turn it on the very first button I see is "Launch Game" which is all I need mostly. People even criticze that new new logo floating around for the XBOX saying it's the ugliest thing they have EVER SEEN. It's a circle with an X in it - there is literally nothing groundbreaking or thought provoking about it yet we've all come to a consensus that no, it's a piece of shit.

Console launches are both the greatest and worst things ever.

If it's anything like Steam's offline mode then this still isn't good news. Half the time I try and play games in offline mode at work it pops up some error message saying that I didn't meet one of their dozen dumb requirements for being allowed to play this particular game offline right now. They would have to make an incredible case in order for me to see something as an acceptable trade off for this. Even if the offline mode works flawlessly, blocking me from borrowing my buddies games and vice versa fucking sucks, that's the whole reason I mainly play games on a console, and it would cause them to lose their biggest advantage against the PC.

@hunter5024: As a heads up, Steam's offline mode hasn't had bizarre requirements in years.

There are 2 requirements:

1. Have the game installed already
2. Have run the game while online at least once

Those are the only requirements for offline mode to work. Anything not working after those steps is the game, not steam.

If the durango has those same requirements, it's not a huge deal.

Edit: Corrected wrong metric of time in the first sentence.

Durango will have a blu-ray player. How about that.

This is nice to hear, But I maintain that if this isn't true and the next Xbox does indeed require a constant internet connection, I won't be buying one ever.

Have they mentioned Blu Ray before now? That seems like a pretty big deal.

Let's not beat around the bushes here - this has a clear ring of "controlled leak". Furthermore, I think we can agree strongly with what the most promoted comment for the article suggests,

Of course, the existence of such a mass e-mail implies that this is a recent change in policy. My work never sends an e-mail to everyone to say, "Just FYI, the policy we've had this whole time is still the policy. Keep doing what you've been doing."

Beyond that, I consider Ars a very dependable source. To me, this whole thing sounds like the folks and Microsoft paid attention to the public reaction to leaks about an online requirement (alongside the Orth incident) and decided to play it safe and pull back on that feature.

If we take the above to be true (which as @believer258 rightly states, we shouldn't, but hey), then I'd like to believe that for once internet-crazy paid off.

@eujin: Regardless of whose fault it is, I still have trouble playing offline for games that I have no trouble while connected. And I'm not talking about online games either. Even if it is the games problems rather than steams, I feel it's the platform holders responsibility to standardize that sort of stuff, and steam doesn't do that. If microsoft makes the decision to force online verification then they need to handle it better, otherwise its still a shitty situation for the consumer.

Edit: Also I'm pretty sure there are some other requirements. Im fairly certain one time it didn't work because I didn't have the latest version of steam.

I think we're going to see two different Xbox designs. One that's just like the 360 we have now, that will play discs, and can be played offline. And a cheaper version, with no disc drive, that can only download games off Xbox Live, and therefore must be connected at all times.

While this sounds like a big positive, I'll wait for the reveal show until I make my judgement.

Not really, there is no chance they would use DVDs, every game would probably be 3-4 discs...

Bluray is basically the standard for optical media now, I really don't think there was much doubt the Durango would have it.

"Are console won't have a shit feature that only hurts the customer. Now buy our product!"

It's great that they are not going to have total control over something that you buy-to-own, but they are far away from having their next console being considered a worthy buy. The 360 has only gotten worse as this generation progressed. It is a terrible platform in it's current state. Microsoft will have to do a complete 180 degree turn in terms of how they act as a platform holder before anyone should consider any console they plan on releasing.

@hunter5024: I find your concerns perfectly valid, I just wanted to set the record straight on Steam's offline mode. You shouldn't have to do anything else other than that, but the only other thing I could think of is having launched the game since the last time it patched. Maybe the game patched the last time you were online, and didn't run it since then?

@eujin: I think that was probably it. Whatever it was, it was quite annoying.

As much as I hated the theory of it, my 360 has probably been 99.999% online since I got it anyway. So didn't really care either way.

I'm all mea culpa'd out after recommending to my friends we try out the new Ragnarok Online 2 game. This was just weeks after we had invested in Defiance. Yeesh.

That's what we call a 1-2 punch...a friend and I almost bought in hard on God Mode, but couldn't find two other suckers to mow down the Greek Pantheon with assault rifles.