In an interview with Game Informer, SCE Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida stated that the company never considered making the PlayStation 4 always online.
“Did we consider it? No, we didn’t consider it. 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 [that] do not really have robust Internet.”
The always online concerns come after rumours that Microsoft’s next Xbox console will be constantly connected to the Internet and will even require a connection to play all single-player games. Wide-spread criticism has erupted since, with some arguing that users are online most of the time anyway, while others find it a strategy to counter used games sales.
Conflicting reports are still coming but until its revealed, we’ll never know for sure. Unlike for the PlayStation 4, that is.