Sony's suggested as much before, but now always-online has definitively been ruled out for PlayStation 4.

"Did we consider it? No, we didn't consider it," Sony's affable Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Worldwide Studios, told GameInformer magazine (read by Gaming Everything).

He seems pretty happy about all this.

"The main reason being that many countries don't have robust internet connections. It makes sense for people to have internet connections to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw do not really have robust internet."

Back when PlayStation 4 was revealed, Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer that "oh yes, yes, you can go offline totally" - "You can play offline, but you may want to keep it connected."

Very good, very good - but what will Microsoft opt for? For months, it looked like the next Xbox would require a constant internet connection, and we've heard things behind the scenes that back this up.

Just this week, however, an internal Microsoft document slipped out revealing that the next Xbox apparently won't require a constant internet connection for single-player games.

The truth we should find out on 21st May, when Microsoft formally unveils the next Xbox. We'll be there, ringside in Redmond, delivering a blow-by-blow account of everything that goes down.