This is the difference between Microsoft and Google.
Microsoft will jam products down your throat hoping you will like it.
Google spends years creating services to support your livelihood and spearheading projects like Google Fiber.
One tells you to get the internet, another gives you internet.
And then Google rips them out underneath your feet. RIP Google Reader.
But seriously, I think people have the right to have a working product on day one. The launches of Sim City and Diablo 3 were poorly managed. They just under estimated their hardware. I doubt MS is going to make that same mistake. They've run XBL 24/7 since 2002 with very few outages. The only major (>24 hours) outage I can recall is the holiday one (one major outage over 11 years? Quite impressive I believe.).
The problems people have with internet connections is real though, but I do think it's getting blown out of proportions. For example, are people in these areas not able to play any MMO? Can they not watch movies on Netflix and enjoy it? I think people in these areas do use a lot of online services with minimal issues. I grew up in a suburb in Wisconsin where our only provider was Time Warner. The shit was slow, but it never went out for me with any consistency.
Of course, as many people have mentioned before, Steam also doesn't work if you start it up when you don't have internet. To use their offline mode, you have to be online and select "Go Offline" in the menu. That doesn't exactly work when you don't have internet to begin with. But, to be fair, if your internet goes out after Steam is open, it won't bring up a network troubleshooter and pause your games.
As long as MS can make sure that XBL is stable, I don't think there's really going to be an issue.
Oh, and Sony did say that they aren't forcing this at the platform level. It's up to the publishers if they want to require online for their games. I think people on PS4 are still going to get a heavy dose of online only games.
