Xbox One DOES require a sort of permanent internet connection

Got your head around the pre-owned situation? Good. Now here’s the next confusion for you – does the Xbox One need a permanent internet connection?

This is Microsoft’s official line: "Xbox One does not have to be always connected, but Xbox One does require a connection to the internet."

Right.

Rumours of the Xbox One requiring a permanent internet connection had been doing the rounds for quite some time until earlier this month when a leaked” and not at all staged email appeared online finally dismissing the rumour.

Now, however, it appears that while the console WILL function offline it will need to be connected to the internet periodically as the console will check for an internet connection once a day.

"There are many devices in your life that require the internet to function," Microsoft’s Phil Harrison told Kotaku. "Xbox One is no different in that it requires, at some point in the beginning and at various times through its on state, to connect to our cloud and to our Internet.

That is to deliver Xbox Live functionality, that is to deliver download content to you, that is to deliver some of the innovations around TV and entertainment that we showed today. But it doesn’t require it to be online all the time."

This was his answer when pressed on how often Xbox One will check its connection to the internet: [It] depends on the experience," Harrison replied. "For single-player games that don’t require connectivity to Xbox Live, you should be able to play those without interruption should your internet connection go down.

Blu-ray movies and other downloaded entertainment should be accessible when your internet connection may be interrupted. But the device is fundamentally designed to be expanded and extended by the Internet as many devices are today."

Harrison was then asked the following by Kotaku: If I’m playing a single player game, do I have to be online at least once per hour or something like that? Or can I go weeks and weeks?”

To which he replied: I believe it’s 24 hours.”

This was then further complicated by a follow-up statement from Microsoft PR: "While Phil [Harrison] discussed many potential scenarios around games on Xbox One, today we have only confirmed that we designed Xbox One to enable our customers to trade in and resell games at retail.

"There have been reports of a specific time period — those were discussions of potential scenarios, but we have not confirmed any details today, nor will we be."