Are you the kind of person that prefers your games to be single player focused? Do you dislike this whole service-based initiative that many publishers appear to have adopted? Hard luck. In the wake of layoffs at Agents of Mayhem developer Volition, NPD analyst Mat Piscatella has been chatting with Games Beat about the challenges facing offline games – and they’re significant to say the least.
“The top-selling games in the console market at the moment are primarily service based games that promise significant or even unlimited hours of gameplay,” he told the site. “Single player, non-service based games have to be nearly perfect in execution not only with the game itself but also in the marketing and promotion around the game to get to the top of the charts.”
The takeaway here is that publishers can have success with single player releases – but they better be flawless. Recent examples of games that have achieved this kind of success include Fallout 4 and The Witcher III: Wild Hunt – two titles with superb marketing campaigns and outrageously high reviews. Ultimately, it can be done – but it’s becoming increasingly hard.
“It is a very difficult market for the $60 single-player game to hit the volumes in a launch month that service-based games can reach even if they have been in the market for some time,” Piscatella added, referring to the long shelf-life that releases like Destiny and Overwatch are able to tap into. Worrying times for the humble solo campaign, for sure.
[source venturebeat.com]
Comments 94
Fallout 4 wasn't even that good, can't underestimate advertising and word of mouth playing a large part in success.
Agents of Mayhem wasn't a bad game, although the reviews were nothing spectacular.
What killed it imo is lack of goods advertising and marketing campaigns. Off of dedicated gaming websites, I never heard mention of it anyway apart from a small Gamestop promotion.
You don't need to invest in expensive commercials per se, but you need to do SOMETHING.
That aside, I despise service-based games apart from dedicated MMOs like WoW, and will do whatever I can not to support them.
I'm hoping that, at some point, microtransactions with randomized elements (i.e., loot boxes), will get designated as 18+ gambling in the United States, which would hopefully help fight the trend toward service-based games.
@LieutenantFatman I think if it were the first game in a series, people would have been kinder to it. I quite enjoyed it for what it was.
As someone who plays single player games 99% of the time, and who rarely enjoys that other 1%... bollocks.
Yea look at all the crappy performing single player games that came out in the past year like LoZ:BotW, Horizon, Persona 5, NieR, FFXV, and those are just the ones off the top of my head that I personally played. Believe they all sold well to boot.
oh well in 5-10 years time i will still be able to play these so called struggling single player games, can you say the same for all these service based online games?
Single player over multiplayer any day of the week
I think the problem with Agents of Mayhem wasn't it not being "online"
It was the marketing,the idea and the execution.
I guess this explains why Square are going nuts with FFXV.
Really not a fan of the service approach. It may sound like there's infinite hours of play, but you also miss out on certain stuff if you don't constantly play. To me, it feels more like you're losing something rather than adding to the experience.
@glassmusic Maybe you're right. I have to say, I did enjoy Fallout 3 a lot more. Most people say New Vegas is even better but I never got round to that one unfortunately.
I'm old school so yeah single player games with rich stories . Can't get a multiplayer anywhere near the quality of persona 5. Although there's more long-term profit in multiplayer games . Destiny . Wow. Gtav making some serious dough.
I think we are going to see more "budget priced" games like R&C,Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice and Uncharted the Lost Legacy.
This is sad. Gaming and internet access shouldn’t always go hand in hand.
@LieutenantFatman
It's awesome and I highly recommend you play it. Just make sure to download the unofficial patch and Josh Sawyer's mod for an ideal experience.
I liked it much better than Fallout 3. It had better world building.
I still haven't played Horizon:ZD but I was under the impression it sold ok. Zelda BotW I think actually outsold the console it was released on at one point, can't get much better than a 1:1 ratio.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/04/15/wait-how-did-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-for-switch-outsell-the-switch-itself/#486c51a21113
Mario won't outsell the Switch but it's going do pretty well I'd' imagine. God of War, The Last of US 2 and Spiderman should all sell well too I think. (Only thing that could keep TLoU2 from selling well at release is if we're told that 6 months after release there's a better version releasing on PS5. Could happen.)
I'd never even heard of Agents of Mayhem until the article about the layoffs.
Sure, CoD and Destiny outsell a lot of games, b/c that's whats hot. Same goes for FIFA and Madden. But a single player game can still sell if it's good and has some marketing muscle behind it.
How did Uncharted 4 sell? That wasn't all that long ago. Though Sony bundling it w/ PS4 probably meant a lot of people got it that way. I'm not giving up hope.
FFXV sold a ton and it is single player...Horizon Zero Dawn did vey well. Breath of the Wild? Nier did way better than anyone hoped for and I could go on...I don't think it's all doom and gloom.
Well, I may not be buying many games in the future then
Gaming 2017;
noobs, teabagging, lootboxes, crazy ping and pewdiepie.
What the f#!* happened?
I think many of you are missing the point in that publishers stand to make what is potentially a hell of a lot more money from games that people keep coming back to, such as Destiny, Overwatch, etc.
It's not about something like Persona 5 selling 2 million copies, it's about Atlus spending years developing it, releasing it, and... well, that's it. Meanwhile games like the ones mentioned above actively hang around for years and years on top of having already sold a crazy amount of initial copies.
It's mad to think single player games are doomed, but you can bet that every publisher in the industry would love nothing more than to have a Destiny on their hands. If that means culling single player stuff to make room, you better believe that they'll do it.
@WasabiPeanut Indeed, exactly what I was thinking. I haven’t played all those you listed, but I’m pretty sure they’ve sold really well.
@rjejr Last I heard Horizon sold 3m plus. And U4 sold very close to 10m. The advantage that Sony have had for awhile is that strong single player focused games have been their thing and it's what people expect of them, it's when they try to disservice games that they have struggled to catch an audience.
I dont believe single player gaming is dying. At all. If I look at the games I have purchased this year, the vast majority are single player only games. And better for not having online features shoe horned in inappropriately.
The bigger problem is that now there are far too many games being released. this year has been ridiculous. Next year looks no better. This is creating far too much demand on people's limited budgets. Not everyone can afford every title on release. And if there is a title like destiny which is multiplayer focussed, people want to play when demand/playerbase is at its peak; so other games might not get picked up till later in the year when they are on sale.
Frankly, this kind of analysis from npd has a fair whiff of the Michael pachter 'consoles are dead' nonsense we saw during the ps3 generation.
Agents of mayhem was never realistically going to sell big numbers, it never had any buzz around it.
Either way; if single player games ever became a thing of the past, that would be me done with my favourite hobby.
I exclusively play single player games so I don't want to believe it, but it does sound far fetched.
There has been a ton of very successful games released recently that are mostly offline: Uncharted 4, Ratchet and Clank, Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn, Fallout 4, The Witcher, Dark Souls 3, Doom, Nier Automata, Zelda: BotW, Pokemon Sun and Moon and I'm sure I've missed a few. Not to mention Mario Odyssey is coming this Autumn and that will blow the charts up.
Anyway sure I could keep coming back to Destiny if I wanted, for now. The reality is once servers go down service based games are useless. Hence why I prefer offline single player games, and long as I have a working screen, PS4 and disc, they're good to go.
@WasabiPeanut Well, that's kinda his point, no? Those five games you listed all reviewed brilliantly and got their marketing spot on, which is what the analyst is referring to.
Muck up slightly, though, and you have a flop on your hands. Moreover, as @ShogunRok pointed out in his comment, many of these games one-and-done type things, whereas the likes of Destiny and Rainbow Six Siege sell consistently month after month after month.
You're basically agreeing with the analyst.
The thing is that publishers seem to focus only on the top 5 lists. I enjoy Destiny 2 a lot atm. But I also enjoy my retro game collection: pop the cartridge in and go! No downloads, no loading times - just pure couch co-op fun. Nearly unthinkable nowadays.
@Splat I'm amazed Ratchet and Clank was budget priced, I would have happily payed the same price I'd pay for other AAA games.
Publishers are going to use an ok at best game with no advertising like Agents of Mayhem as a barometer for success of single player games? Single player games can still succeed and hell they don't even have to be great. Get in touch with Gamestop, get in touch with websites and advertise...
@ThroughTheIris56 Shhh dont let the cat out of the bag - hopefully insomniac wont realise, and will release the next one for a budget price too!
It was an overwhelmingly generous package and a wonderful game.
@ShogunRok @get2sammyb Actually was just discussing this article with a friend of mine, and you're right in one sense its about chasing the cash of Overwatch etc, but how many companies tried to make a MMO to piggyback on WoW's success and how many of those actually made any money. Perhaps I'm old and out of touch, but most of the comments I read so far seem to agree with me.
I don't really care either way. Less games I'll be buying to get in the way of me denting my backlog.
@ShogunRok But if everyone started making these service based games, the market would become saturated very quickly. You can only play so many games at the same time.
And remember what happened to games like Steep and For Honor? They're not bound to succeed either.
I agree that it's an easy way to make money, but it won't be if everyone started doing it.
I pretty much exclusively play single player games.
@LieutenantFatman I definitely preferred 3 to 4 but in all fairness 3 is probably my favorite game of all time. I didn't get as into NV as some did (never went back for the plat after finishing) but I did enjoy the new additions. I know it'll never happen but I'd love for Obsidian to get another crack at the series.
@Rob_230 Lol absolutely, I really hope they keep Ratchet and Clank going, and other developers bring back more platformers (cough Ape Escape cough).
Understandable that the publishers are following the money, but it appears based on comments from this article and a recent forum posted that single player seems to have a higher audience. Unfortunately that isn't equating to higher dollars. Maybe pushsquare should do a poll single vs multi-player.
For me the amount of time I spend on a game is irrelevant. If i enjoy the experience then I am happy whether its 5 hours or a 1,000. But different people put a different weighting on price layed per hour.
I would also say single player games are bought and resold a lot more therefore the market for single player games is distorted in a physical game sense.
Nature at work - in the sense that service-based games are like a hyperaggressive weed or pest species that outcompetes native species and starves them of nutrients (players/money).
They'll naturally crater the biodiversity of the greater gaming ecosystem until an equilibrium is reached or evolution finds a way to coexist with them. It might be possible to control them through artificially applying weed-killer (government regulation) or by releasing their natural predator (???) into the environment as well, but coordinating action on that level is more often than not a nonstarter.
Best bet for survival in such an ecosystem is to quickly adapt yourself into a specialized extremophile niche. Life'll be tough, but you'll have room to breathe. In the meantime, cherish the endangered species (fully offline AAA games) while they - what's that? They're gone already? Well, it was nice while they lasted.
Bad games sell bad.
Make a great game, it'll sell great.
Isn't Uncharted 4 on track to hit 10 million this year? Nier, Nioh, Horizon, Persona 5 out just this year have already been massive sales successes.
We've had so many service based games, but eventually the pendulum has to swing back around. Just a matter of time. How is Lawbreakers doing? Battleborn? Evolve?
I'm sure it doesn't help that publishers are trying to shoehorn online features into every game.
I understand where he is coming from but at the same time there are a lot of service based games that fail e.g lawbreakers, for Honor, the division. Some sell well for a short time but sometimes it just comes down to quality and passion. GTA online, overwatch, PUBG, rocket league, Battlefield 1, Destiny are all quality releases (I would argue that destiny is subjective in that department though). Also if you make games solely for money then you are part of the problem. Yes money is a big reason for games being made and needs to be made for the game to thrive but u need to put passion and love into a project too. Also, some games are just bland. Lawbreakers was decent but it was too late to the party and people either have their team arena shooter or have moved on from the genre.
As this guy said @WasabiPeanut, also Resident Evil VII and wasn't Crash Bandicoot number 1 for a long time? Mario Odyssey will sell well, Uncharted is doing great, Skyirm and Doom on switch has got people excited and I'd love to know what proportion of people play gta online because gta5 sold well before the online came out.
I will always be a single player first kind of guy
I notice that people don't float anymore from one AAA game to the next. It's more like continually playing one or two service based games and picking up the odd outstanding AAA game like Horizon Zero Dawn then going back to Dota/ CS Go / Destiny / League etc.
I would argue that service based games are just as risky. Look at Battleborne, Lawbreakers etc. For Honor sold well but died pretty much soon after. I can get through loads of spares games in a year but if people are hooked on just one or two titles it leaves little for new purchases.
I like both types of game. The issue with games like Destiny, is that they struggle to keep up with the demand for content that the game engenders. With Destiny 2, players are expecting more than with Destiny 1, and i think Bungie will struggle to meet demand. These games don't keep a huge playerbase all througout their life cycle; it rises and falls in line with new content, events etc, which players are paying for.
@ShogunRok @get2sammyb Another aspect with those examples to point out is that they're massive open world games with hundreds of hours of content. $60 AAA singleplayer games pretty much have to be open world or have open world elements for people to justify paying full price these days. Even Super Mario Odyssey is evidence of this (granted, Nintendo or Sony 1st party games seem to largely be the exception - people are willing to pay full price for those).
The days of the $60 AAA singlepayer game that's 20 hours or less selling super well are numbered. This year has had a few exceptions with Resident Evil 7 (though that was disappointing in comparison to Capcom's lofty expectations), Nier Automata, and Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, however.
There's a few upcoming ones next month that would fall into this category: South Park, Evil Within 2, and Wolfenstein II. We'll see how well these three do, but it wouldn't surprise me if all three struggle.
Single player games will never die. Look at call of duty ww2. The trailer is nothing about the online it's all single player. Therefore the SP is that who sparks interest. Then there's online which when done correctly like raids in destiny adds up to the experience.
On the other hand SP games require good scripting or at least interesting mission build up diverse adversaries and satisfying progression. If you're not good enough to program something like that than you're not good in SP programming sorry. Then you revert to online only.
There is just as much risk in developing a service based game. The community typically can only support so many multiplayer games that reach those Destiny, GTA5, Overwatch or PUBG levels of success.
Just as many multiplayer games flop too, you only need to look at recent efforts like Fortnight, Lawbreakers, Titanfall, Rainbow6 Seige and so on.
I dont think its a dire state of affairs but just a result of years of saturation. Online GAS is recent on consoles, with plenty of innovation and its exciting. Tge balance just happens to be swining one direction. This isnt bad. Just means that a SP title better be bad asd and contribute sonething original and worthy to the community. Otherwise itll get buried. There will always be ppl frothing over great quality aaa-indie sp titles.
@IceClimbers if they struggle we should be ashamed because those you mentioned are great upcoming games. I think there are more peaple who buy 2 or 3 games a year which are Cod Fifa and battlefield or something like overwatch. Then there are those who buy good single player games and for those kind of gamers this was a financial hard year
is this April fools joke.single player will always be here.multiplayer games sucks.don't try to start multiplayer is better than single player campaign.no it's not.
I should also point out some of the singleplayer games that have struggled: Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Dishonored II, and Prey.
In my above examples of games that are exceptions, two of those have DLC (RE7, Mario + Rabbids)!
@lixei32 Agreed. All three look excellent.
@Fath great comment. Now you just need David Attenborough to do
the audio.
And no one has mentioned SFV yet as a counter argument?
I don't think it is so much the offline single player format that is the issue. I believe it is the accessibility of the game that matters more.
I have a young family these days and say games go all online in the way they are currently designed, I would have to stop gaming. The reason being that I will not be able to compete with other gamers PvP, due to insufficient time to spend gaming and getting good. Or MMO's were you need to have people all set up and ready to plough in 3hrs straight, with no interruptions to do dungeons etc. I have good friends but they are either in the same situation as me or living free but either way they are not going to sit there with controller in hand waiting for my call to game!
I'm sure many of you are in the same boat, but that sort of commitment isn't feasible to me anymore. I wish it was sometimes but it just isn't!
So they need to develop an online game where you are not held back or punished or whatever, if you are not able to game 3-5hrs a night like I used to. Or have an entirely single player game that is an online game where you can go through it at a snails/my pace and still be involved! Not entirely sure how they would do that but it must be possible?!
Anyways those are some of my thoughts on online only type games, sorry for going off on a tangent!
@glassmusic I am right there with you.
Single Player games are not struggling at all. This is nonsense. All this article says is that garbage is more acceptable if there is on online component, but you actually have to make a decent game if its offline.
@ThroughTheIris56 Yeah, I would love a new ratchet after spiderman it's been too long since 'into the nexus'.
Im really surprised that ape escape has been dormant for so long. It would be great if it got a new PSN title or something. I think that it is likely that spyro will get remastered next year ; and crash will probably be back now. Wouldnt be surprised to see another sly racoon too.
It's okay, I'll just play Bloodborne forever. There I'll be, still wandering the world of Yharnham as an old man. I'm the last hunter. I haven't encountered another player for nineteen years. They're all busy enjoying Destiny 27. Suddenly, I notice a message on the ground. I feel like Robinson Crusoe when the P&O Ferry sails into view (or however he gets rescued, I haven't actually read it). I approach the message's warm glow. It reads "word up son". I fall to the floor and weep. I am not alone.
Unless they turn the servers off next week.
Some of the best games I've played this gen were pretty low budget so not that worried about good single player experiences.
I feel like for a lot of companies single player experiences are becoming secondary when they are making single player games. Multiplayer is being shoehorned in while storylines and gameplay structure (as in things to do in the games not how they play) usually amount to fetch quests in many games. The rising costs of gaming means many single player games get trimmed down for DLC addons or they just run out of steam midway through the game. Single player experiences aren't where they used to be imo. I get that social gaming is big (not my cup of tea as I prefer local play when playing others...which is also dying) but I don't think the issue is that single player isn't popular so much as the quality and the amount of purely single player games made have gone down.
Gross. Don't take away my SP games please. I don't want to connect to a server just to play every game by myself.
A factor that publishers don't seem to take into account is time. Most gamers with the disposable income to buy new titles don't have the amount of free time to get the most out of more than one title at a time. I play Destiny 2 for maybe a couple of hours a day, and I work full time. If I had kids, you can half that at least. Now, factor in wanting to play the big new title (say, CODWWII) and I just don't have time for both. A game like Nier I can play at my own pace. Destiny I can't, or I'll miss events, or get left behind when my mates are all higher level than I am.
It's all very well saying that this is the future, but if too many service games flood the market, way too many will fail to make it sustainable.
There's room for both, and both will continue.
@Johnnycide Exactly. With single player games, I find it so much easier to pace out what I'm playing, because you finish the campaign and you put it to the side until the next time playing. Games that brag about 100's of hours of content don't impress me because I don't want to be glued to one game forever when there's so much else out there and I only have limited time.
@Octane Absolutely, crafting a hit like Destiny or Overwatch or a successful MMO is obviously incredibly difficult. Not every publisher has the resources to do it, either.
@IceClimbers Very true, it's all about keeping players invested, keeping them coming back for more. Whether it's DLC, expansions, or events. Like you say, the ongoing rise of open world games is partly a result of this mindset.
I think they're focusing on too much raw sales data and not things like maintenance. Multiplayer games have entire teams dedicated to constantly updating and tweaking them.
Of course they'll become the "top selling" games, because they've successfully applied the mobile model to a $60 multiplayer game.
Want to get that lvl60 gun early? Pay me $4 and you can get that and so much more.
Nothing is really wrong with that, but it successfully turns the game into a constant revenue stream, something a singleplayer game can only compete against with DLC, which gamers get really angry about. But 50 different guns hidden behind lootcrates is just fine.
Horizon and BoTW in the top 5 best selling games of the year whilst being exclusive, Nier Automata shipped over 2m copies, P5 a massive hit for Atlus and Re7 slowly but surely making bank for Capcom. Ehhhhhhh not worried one bit.
I think over the course of the start of last gen to now there definitely has been less single-player games released, partly because of the rise of multiplayer but also because the market for mid-tier games disappeared, leading to the extremes of small indie releases to AAA games with very little in between.
I do think it's something that will slowly change going forward, the publishers may chase sales the likes of Destiny achieved but as others have said, there's only so many games like that that can be played at once, for every success story there will be more that don't achieve it, just like we saw with mobile gaming.
I feel that as indies games are getting more and more sophisticated and seeing more financial success, a lot of them will start to make more ambitious games, replicating the mid-tier games we saw in the PS2/GameCube era, a lot will be single player i reckon, we're already seeing a few games like this, Yooka Laylee is a good example.
I like the odd multiplayer game but 99% of my gaming time is on single-player games so i would most likely give up the hobby if they were to die out.
This is just publishers chasing the current in thing rather than them trying to innovate something new. I honestly can't think of many of these so called service based games that are actually doing well. Wasn't The Division supposed to be big in that market? Or For Honor? Or, well the list goes on much longer than the successes.
I think it's a huge problem when companies like Square announce a game like Tomb Raider was a flop as it only sold 3.5 million copies. Not every game has to sell astronomical figures to do well and developing games for this category seems like a smart move to me. Thankfully there are still developers out there dedicated to making good games without being swayed by current trends and their profits will only increase as the single player area of the market shrinks.
It's disappointing that these multiplayer service games sell so much better over their lifespan than solid single player experiences. I blame not only marketing, but the casual gamer market. We who visit gaming sites like Pushsquare and keep up with reviews and watch E3 and follow news (like when a studio has lay-offs , lol) — we are the minority of gamers, believe it or not. Some people buy like 2-3 games a year, and it's COD or Madden or something to play with friends. There are a lot of what I would call 'casual gamers' who drive the market. I blame them.
If I lose my Personas and Final Fantasys and Uncharteds, I'm gonna be pretty ticked.
After I read this article and scrolled down to read the comments, I honestly expected that I was one of the few remaining pro-single player/ante-online gamers left in this world. Whenever a destiny/CoD/SW battlefront comes out I honestly do try yet again to play the multiplayer content but I just end up fuming at my ineptitude and everyone else's elite ability and end up rage quitting. I mean, on the CoD single player I'm hitting head shot after head shot, Mr S.A.S. Online, I'd miss the floor if I aimed at it lol. The single player is player friendly, emotionally investing via story and character. I dunno, we all play different games because we all have our own tastes. There's obviously a market for both single player and service based,this past years releases support that after all.
Single Player games that are good are getting sales!! for me I prefer to play SP games over MP any day most of my mates feel the same way no SP in a game never buy it. Agents Of Mayhem just did not look great to me so never bought it simple as that had a childish feel to it.
That's really sad to hear, especially after so many great SP games being released recently, games like Horizon Zero Dawn, Gravity Rush 2, Persona 5, Nioh, The Last Guardian, Nier...
I always prefer SP games, really don't care about MP games recently. If that's the future of the gaming industry, i will probably leave the hobby, or be a retro gamer, lol.
Ahah "flawless" and "Fallout 4" is a thing that doesn't match AT ALL...one of the most overrated games in history!
Anyway...singleplayer games are what it's at! I can remember full singleplayer stories while in online games I remember like 1 minute from 100 hours of playing. What I'm trying to say is that it is much more memorable to experience a singleplayer game than playing the same thing over and over online
@blakey78 I'm usually good in multiplayer games (Destiny 2 i'm like 90% top player in team, and in other games I do well like League of Legends and so forth) but if you throw me a great singleplayer game I'd put the online game aside without second thoughts
Fake News
This is incredibly surprising for me. As someone who lives off of single player experiences, I actually don't believe it at all. Online multiplayer game can't live forever since they require an active player base. Yet I can go back and replay Ocarina of Time and Paper Mario as many times as I want. Naming just two games!? What about Nier Automata, Uncharted, Yakuza 0 and the other hundreds of single-player-only games out there?
I don't really know what to think about the claim made by Mat Piscatella. For such a claim i need facts, charts and graphs. There is after all such a plethora of information to filter through. Lots of click bait, fake news, and disinformation to filter out.
Online multiplayer is not replacing off line single player for me. As long as there are good single player AAA games made i will continue to purchase some.
Are companies attempting to cash in like R* and other companies have with online ? Very probably so.
@AFCC @David187 @PS_Nation @RedMageLanakyn @playstation1995 @johncalmc @ThroughTheIris56 @Rob_230 @flummerfelt @johnny30 @FullbringIchigo @WasabiPeanut @Kogorn733 @glassmusic Agreed 100% with you guys. I prefer (offline) single player games for the story driven content and rich worldtelling. I'd probably stop buying future games if they dropped all single player content.
Which would be fine since I already have a 60+ PS3 game backlog, and eventually I'll own 100+ PS4 games to play (currently at 16ish).
@FullbringIchigo i agree. These online only games are gonna saturate the market in the coming years if not sooner when people only prob buy maybe 2 to 3 of these games a year. These games will fail just the same cause i think they have to strive for greatness more so than a single player game. It takes atleast multiple people for the game to even "run". Ill stick to my BF or maybe a lil GOW for my online fix. Single player wont die anytime soon
@blakey78 nope you arent alone. We in the same boat on that 1
If GTA can do both, why can't others? Single player games are far deeper and more rewarding than most multiplayer ones. What's wrong with doing a single player game as a service?
Are the fine analyst telling me that if Agents of Whatever were a service based game, or URG (Unfinished Rented Game) if you prefer, now Volition's employees would swim in gold?
Releasing such a game now at that price sounds like selling ice cubes to the Eskimos.
Oh, goodie.
good thing then that I got a huge backlog.
Can't stand online gaming, who are games living on borrowed time anyway.
The plug can be pulled any moment.
And Fallout 4 was anything but superb.
it was Fallout 3 with prettier graphics.
And a subpar storyline, which had zero urgency nor was it engaging.
NV it was not
@get2sammyb This article and all these fab comments has fascinated me. I was wondering, as it's Friday, is it worth doing a poll on the subject? I honestly thought I was in the minority when it came to the online/offline divide. I thought 80% of people gravitated to more online service based games these days like destiny. Reading all 88 comments so far, it seems like it's the opposite to my thoughts though.
@JoeBlogs Ha ha - I have an image of our fellow Push Square gamers, sat in oak studded libraries, on a leather chair sipping brandy while playing single player.
This makes me sad, because while I really enjoy Destiny 2 , my favorite games from this year have been Persona 5, and Nier Automata. As well as LOCAL multiplayer games on switch. If these service games just included local multiplayer, I would be happy.
I have very limited time. I don't want "unlimited" games...
@ToddlerNaruto They don't all have to be 100% offline. Dying light is a fantastic example of a great single player game that also has excellent (but completely optional) co-op as well. Hopefully devs can find a good way to balance the two so we at least have options instead of forcing us into always being online.
I would have to disagree with you there, all the best games of this year have been single player games (Zelda, Persona, Nioh, Nier and Horizon). Why Agents flopped was because like Battleborn it wasn't what the fans wanted from said studio.
If single player games are struggling, then why is Skyrim is being ported to everything bar the kitchen sink.
Honestly should have called it saints row 5:agents of mayhem. Also didn't destiny and overwatch had marketing budgets to the moon.
Hmmm... So single player focused sequels such as a new skyrim 2, red dead redemption 2, witcher 4, last of us 2, grand theft auto 5 or tomb raider 3, new final fantasy 7 won't do well? Not so sure on that. Marvel v capcom infinite is multiplayer focused and that didn't do too well. What about Lawbreakers or battleborn? Perhaps it's just down to the quality of the game... Maybe Agent's of mayhem was missing the killer hook which blockbusters enjoy?
@Rudy_Manchego OMG so not me XD. I'd be sitting on my bed in my Spider-man PJs sipping water while gaming.
@RedMageLanakyn They have to be for me. I don't care for co-op/versus or multiplayer of any kind. I'd rather play alone against the computer and enemy AIs.
@ToddlerNaruto OK, but I assume the spiderman pj's are tweed and the water a sparkling Mediterranean mineral water?
@Rudy_Manchego You're too much Bert XP. Glad to have you here on PushSquare.
@ToddlerNaruto Thanking you good Sir
I think this is false. Bc it's the same way with service based games. If there not good they fail. There's only 4 success ones that come to mind Destiny, The Division, GTA and Overwatch. Most of the others have failed. Look at Battleborn and LawBreakers. I dont think SP games are going anywhere, and using Agents of Mayhem is a bad example. The game didn't look that good to begin with.
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