: And it's not like your online audience is going to vanish just because the
: console is usable by non-connected people; your userbase for the online
: feature is probably going to be just as big, and thus just as worth
: developing.

The difference is, the chance is much less that your only-user-capable features will be awesome. eg "Drivatar" - no worries, every person being connected (or syncing their offline habits every 24hrs?) means everyone else's opponents will be much better tuned to their real-world counterparts. W/o online checkin, the pool of users from whom to create and hone the virtual drivatar will be far less useful. Back to the "old way" - attempting to sell game-only features to community ("please stay connected so we can improve your drivatar!") rather than a fundamental and safe presumption based on a system-level feature.

Dunno, just thinking about the practical benefits and drawbacks of these things...