Xbox – Performing initial setup without an internet connection

From Microsoft's official statement post-the E3 uproar, back on the 19th of June:

An internet connection will not be required to play offline Xbox One games – After a one-time system set-up with a new Xbox One, you can play any disc based game without ever connecting online again. There is no 24 hour connection requirement and you can take your Xbox One anywhere you want and play your games, just like on Xbox 360.

^{(their emphasis)}

That "one-time system setup" includes an initial day one update of about 500MB that the console needs to download to be fully functional, but you don't need to sign in to your console or Xbox Live to receive that update, the console will find and download it as soon as it is first internet connected. (source: this was the first thing my Xbox One did yesterday after switching on and checking my wired internet connection, and before taking me through the initial set up of signing in and calibrating the Kinect).

Of course that statement was published under the name of Don Mattrick, then President of Microsoft's Interactive Entertainment Business, who has since left Microsoft to join Zynga, so I can understand anyone worrying if that statement is still true.

Marc Whitten, who is still, Microsoft's Xbox One chief product officer was interviewed by Kotaku, and this is what was said:

...your new Xbox console would have to connect online once in order to do the things Microsoft described today. And then you can keep it offline and play games without re-connecting to the Internet forever.

I don't believe that there has been anything since contradicting that statement.

(Addendum: it was briefly possible to pull down the day one patch on a PC and transfer to an offline Xbox on a USB stick, but Microsoft have just removed that facility from their website, and have said that Microsoft Support will take people through a manual update process if necessary)

Lots of optional apps and services do require an internet connection, but these are optional parts of the experience. Some examples:

• Skype requires an internet connection, so that it can do video calling and messaging.
• Video streaming services, such as Netflix, Amazon Streaming and Hulu, require an internet connection to stream movies.
• Multiplayer gaming over Xbox Live requires an internet connection to connect the players. Some future games may be multi-player only (eg Titanfall) and so won't work without an internet connection.

The Playstation 4 does not need an internet connection, however the day 1 patch does enable a wide variety of features. If all you want it for is to play games though, it should work entirely internet free I'm fairly sure

Games should come with the system update version they require to play, if any, a la the PS3 I believe, but I haven't encountered this yet since the PS4 updates it self...on the internet, anyway. You should also note a few games require day one patches either for stability or performance tweaks which could be a deal breaker. A couple games require patches for higher resolution, and BF4 at the least requires quite a few patches (but it's not much of an offline game anyway).

The Xbox One needs a patch to be used offline and will be basically dead with no connection or patch of any sort. Again, not sure if you can update the system's OS using game disks like you could with PS3, if someone knows whether you can that'd be great to know. Day one patches are at least as much of an issue on Xbox One though, for example I think Forza adds a notable amount of content with a patch including, I believe, the ability to finish career mode.