Mattrick addresses Xbox One online concerns

Microsoft's Don Mattrick has stated that the worst of the outcry against the Xbox One's online requirements are based on unrealistic scenarios.

Speaking to GameTrailers, the president of Microsoft' interactive entertainment business directly addressed the huge backlash that greeted the Xbox One's online strategy.

"We appreciate the passion," Mattrick said. "It's important that people share their ideas, but people are imagining outcomes that we believe are worse than what it's going to be like in the real world.

"When we designed the box we paid attention to what it means to connect to the internet. The average internet connection is working the majority of the day. People are imagining that it isn't, but I don't feel that's the world we live in."

Mattrick described the decision to design the console with an online connection as a fundamental presence was as, "a future proof choice." Microsoft "absolutely" expected some push-back from the audience, but Mattrick seemed sure that the benefits of periodic online checks would be apparent to any users of the console.

"It's something that when people experience it, it's easier than having someone like me describe it," he said.

At the start of the interview, Mattrick pointed to the Xbox 360 - a device for which Microsoft has pledged its ongoing support - as an appropriate option for someone with no access to the internet of any kind. However, he made it clear that this is an extreme set of circumstances that very few people would experience.

"If you have zero access to the internet then that [Xbox 360] is an offline device," he said. "Seriously, when I read the blogs and thought about who would be the most impacted it was a person who said, 'hey, I'm on a nuclear sub.'

"I don't even know what it means to be on a nuclear sub, but I've got to imagine it won't be easy to get an internet connection. I can empathise... I would be disappointed."