Sunset Overdrive will use Xbox One Cloud but should be playable offline

Insomniac hopes for Xbox One title Sunset Overdrive to be playable offline despite plans to utilise Microsoft’s cloud computing network.

"Our intent is that you will be able to play the single-player without an online connection," Insomniac president and CEO Ted Price told GameInformer. "The game will be updated with content we expect that all players will want. You won’t be able to access that without an online connect."

Of course, very few devs and publishers will dare to release titles that require an online connection – at least in the Xbox One’s formative months. But it’s clear that many, including Price, see tremendous value in Microsoft’s online ambitions.

"The potential of the cloud for console developers is pretty large," he added. "Over the next five or six years, it’s one of those technologies that will change in meaning as we see more games come out and take innovative approach to the more and more offline processing that’s available.

"It is proven that cloud services can improve products and services in other areas, so it’s cool that games are starting to take advantage of it. Some of the hardcore data collection, correlation, and translation that we expect to do is difficult and takes a lot of horsepower, and that is one aspect of the cloud that is attractive to us.

We’re learning that new opportunities and ideas are popping up every month when we discover how we can take aspects of the game offline [to the cloud]. We are going to be relying on heavy backend services to churn through the data we get from players to understand what they’re telling us and what they’re doing in the game."