Given Electronic Arts’ (
EA) recent
misadventures with requiring always-on Internet connectivity to play SimCity, you might think that
Microsoft (
MSFT) would be more cautious about implementing such a scheme for its next-generation Xbox. But
unnamed sources have told Kotaku that Microsoft’s new Xbox “must have an active Internet connection to be used” and will only let users continue to play games on their consoles if their connection is disrupted for less than three minutes. To make matters worse, one source tells
Kotaku that “no games or apps can be started” without an Internet connection, meaning that console will essentially be useless unless it’s hooked up to the web. We’d previously heard rumors that
Microsoft would require an Internet connection when playing new games so that it could verify their activation codes and prevent users from playing used games, but this is the first time we’ve heard that the new Xbox will require an Internet connection just to function.
