Why physical discs won’t work as an Xbox One fail-safe to bad internet connection

As everyone is well aware by now, the Xbox One will require your system to connect to the internet at least once every 24 hours to continue to play your games — even if you wish to do so offline. If you're at a friend's house, it will require internet connection at least once per hour. If you do not establish connection, you do not game; it's as simple as that. But what if it's out of your control? What if you can't connect to the internet in that period of time?

At E3 last week, Microsoft's Larry 'Major Nelson' Hryb was asked why the physical copy of a game would not work as sort of a fail-safe system should the Xbox One not be able to connect to the internet in the 24-hour time period. Sounds simple enough; pop in the disc and continue playing — you know, like how things work today.

"The way we designed the Xbox One architecture is for flexibility," Major Nelson explained. "One of the areas we can do that is, for instance, our family sharing. If you and I are in a family, you can check a game out of our game library and use it, so this ability that we've got of seeing what you've got in your library is a result of being always connected.

"So we think the upside of being connected is really about the library and having access to your games anywhere you are; things you really can't do today. And all of us having access to our games anywhere you are. That's certainly one approach, but we decided to take a little bit of a different approach because we think it's going to be more flexible for the future," he continued.

"That's really what Xbox One is about. We've looked toward the future and said 'this is where the gaming industry is going' and we want gamers to come with us on this journey which is going to unlock this amazing potential of these great gaming experiences, as well as flexibility. So we decided to take an approach that's going to be infinitely more flexible."

So… the Xbox One's architecture isn't designed to function that way? For a system that's so flexible, you'd think it could play discs.

[RedditGames]