According to EA community manager APOC, the recently announced Command & Conquer 4 will require an always on, active internet connection, even in single player campaigns.

APOC explains that the inclusion of a robust stat-tracking system was the primary motivation factor behind making a persistent connection a necessity.

As of right now, you need to be online all the time to play C&C 4. This is primarily due to our “player progression” feature so everything can be tracked. C&C 4 is not an MMO in the sense of World of Warcraft, but conceptually it has similar principles for being online all the time. While some may be taken aback by this, we’ve been testing this feature internally with all of our world-wide markets. We wanted to make sure it wouldn’t take away any significant market or territory from playing the game. We have not found or seen any results that have made us think otherwise. You won’t need a fast connection, in fact, you could be on age-old dial-up, and have the same single player experience as everyone else. Online all the time won’t cause lag for single-player. We’ve also heavily worked on the online infrastructure such that people with slower connections will not lag other players with faster connections in Multiplayer.

Interesting decision, one that I think will not be taken lightheartedly by longtime fans of the franchise. It’s one thing to require an active internet connection for activation purposes, but to always require it during solo gameplay sessions seems a bit excessive. Technicalities aside, surely stats could be recorded offline then sent to master severs once the player goes online? I feel more justification is needed here.

A PC-exclusive effort, Command & Conquer 4 is due out in 2010.

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