Always connected while sucks its the future, And the faster people learn this the faster they will move on. both IPTV and movie streaming and cloud gaming is the future, hard copied media is on the way out. You can try to stay in the past with never being connected but im sure the same people that complain about always connected keep there computer connected 24/7 have there cell phone connected 24/7 yet because its out of the norm for a game system they revolt against it.
This is the bit of your post I take issue with here. Always-online will only become the future if people let it be the future. If customers refuse to accept it, then companies will stop pushing it.
Also, as someone who complains bitterly about always-online, yes - I do try and keep my PC connected to the internet when it's turned on, and obviously I don't disconnect my phone from the mobile network because that would defeat the point of having it (and is actually really difficult to do). The problem is, no matter what I try and do, I
can't always be online. It's actually not possible.
I have a high-end 60Mb fibre connection (apparently better than 74% of the UK), and even so I suffer periods when the internet is not working properly. Once the router broke and I went 3 days without internet at all. More often I just get the occasional 5-minute period of downtime every now and then, or more frequently periods of extremely high pings and low speeds. In a month or two, I'll be going back to a much slower, much more unreliable ADSL connection. And a few months after that, I'll be moving somewhere where I'll only have access to a university-provided internet connection which would most likely just totally block all connections from an Xbox entirely at all times (which is what my current university does in its student accommodation).
So if I decide I want to play the game I've paid good money for, I want to know that I will be able to play it. Whenever I want, at any time, in any place, whether the internet connection is working or not. Sure, the ability for me to go online while playing and get access to updates, multiplayer, a community, etc is great - I'm all for that. And if those functions are unavailable at times when I'm not online? That's not a problem. But I still want to be able to play the rest of my game at those times.
Also, this doesn't apply to the Xbox obviously, but is very important for PC games - I want to be able to play them on my laptop on the go. On the train, the plane, in the car, on a boat, wherever I happen to be. I'm going to be relying on games to keep me entertained during the 11-hour flight to Japan in a few months for example, and one thing I can be sure of is that I won't have internet access. Another example of why always-on is flawed.
When internet access is actually required for the product to function properly (such as an MMO), then obviously I'm fine with that. It's part of the deal, and there's a good reason for it which benefits me as a consumer, it's not just an unnecessary restriction. For example, I'm quite OK with the fact that I can't use my phone (as a phone) when I don't have a connection to the network - it is obviously a fundamental requirement of being able to phone people, which is the entire point of a phone, so it makes perfect sense. If my phone forbade me from using any apps (such as to play solitaire, or read an ebook) unless I had a stable network connection, then I would be very angry, because there is absolutely no good reason for it.
So yeah. It's not a question of wanting to not be online (although people should have that right), for me it's a question of not physically being able to be online at all times.
