Confirmed: Next XBox Won’t Require Users to Connect to Internet to Play Games

It looks like Microsoft won’t be as dumb as, well, Microsoft seems to be sometimes. That’s right XBox fans, you won’t need to be connected to the Internet to enjoy any games on the next-gen XBox console, currently known as the XBox 720.

Word has come to us today from the fine folks are Ars Technica (who got hold of an internal Microsoft email) that the Redmond giant has decided against this requirement. In the email, from Microsoft to Xbox engineers, the company outlines “a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection” and instructing the engineers to make those functions “‘just work’ regardless of their current connection status.”

The email goes on to say that the new Xbox should be designed for “playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game” without an Internet connection. Well, that makes more sense, doesn’t it?

This is a good thing. The idea, most recently put forth by former Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Orth who told critics of an always-online console to “deal with it” because “every device now is ‘always on,” needs to be put to rest. Looks like it will be.

That is, until the next time Microsoft or one of the other manufacturers, decides to try it (or something similar) again.