Xbox One backlash was unfair, says Molyneux

The backlash Microsoft faced surrounding the Xbox One's since-reversed online and DRM policies was unfair, according to Peter Molyneux, former Microsoft executive-turned-independent developer.

"It's quite an unfair thought that Microsoft are trying to control our gaming, they're trying to force us to be online all the time," Molyneux told TechRadar in a new interview. "[People] didn't really think that through."

Molyneux said the Xbox One's former online requirement was actually a bold vision for the future and not something gamers should have been wary of.

"I know Microsoft, I know they were only doing things because they thought they were long-reaching and long-thinking," Molyneux said. "But the world we live in now is that we have to realise, especially if you're a big corporation, if you make one step wrong, the world will leap on you, and unfairly, very unfairly, they will judge you."

Though the Xbox One no longer requires an Internet connection, Molyneux said there is no escaping a future when a constant connection is king.

"Whether as consumers we like it or not, just like every form of technology interaction, there's an inevitability of online," Molyneux said. "We know that online is so much a part of our existence now that we're going to be in a world very soon where we have to be online all the time."

"A mobile device is more and more non-functional without a connection to the Internet, and why should that be any different for consoles?"

Informing gamers of the "real benefit" of being online is the challenge Microsoft faces, Molyneux said.

"If you have an online experience where millions of people interact together, something unique happens," he said. "And we don't use that enough in gaming."

Id Software co-founder John Carmack, who recently took a full-time job at Oculus VR, also defended Microsoft recently. During his QuakeCon keynote address, the industry veteran said the Xbox One "witch hunt" was "a little bit unjustified."