As with any highly anticipated release, there has been a lot of speculation surrounding Microsoft's (News - Alert) follow up to its popular Xbox 360 game console, codenamed "Durango." Some of the rumors about the next generation Xbox, however, have been a major concern for consumers, namely the one which posits that the next Xbox would require a constant Internet connection to play games.

Obviously, this had many gamers riled up. After all, not everyone has access to reliable, consistent broadband connectivity. There's also the fact that the game industry doesn't have a good track record with "always on" DRM. This year's SimCity release was the most recent and brutal reminder of this.

Fortunately, after playing it coy for the past month or so, Microsoft confirmed Monday that its next console will not require a constant connection to work. Well, it wasn't an official confirmation, but it does come from a reliable source: an internal e-mail sent to all full-time employees working on the next Xbox.

"Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game."

This doesn't completely clear up how Microsoft plans to handle game activation on its new console — the e-mail doesn't say if playing a new game for the first time will work just like the Xbox 360 or if the process will more closely mirror Steam's online activation system, for example — but it does mean at least that those with less reliable Internet connectivity can breathe a sigh of relief.

There still remains a fair amount of uncertainty surrounding the next Xbox, of course, but its official unveil date of May 21 is fast approaching, so gamers won't have to wait much longer to have all their questions answered.