An Always-Online PS4 was Never Considered by Sony

Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida has told GameInformer magazine, via GamingEverything, that the company never planned to make the PS4 always-online.

Asked if Sony thought about requiring a constant connection Yoshida said "Did we consider it? No, we didn't consider it. The main reason being that many countries don't have robust internet connections.

"It makes sense for people to have internet connection to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw do not really have robust internet."

When the PlayStation 4 was announced in February Yoshida commented to Eurogamer "oh yes, yes, you can go offline totally. You can play offline, but you may want to keep it connected."

While that will likely appease many PlayStation fans it's not quite as clear cut for Xbox owners with consistent speculation that there would be an internet requirment for Microsoft's next console which is due to be revealed later this month.

However, internal emails revealed only this week seem to suggest that certain activities, including playing games, will be possible on the Xbox 720 without a connection. 

The PS4 is set to released during Holiday 2013.