The whole debate around whether or not traditional single player games are dying and on the way out has gained a lot more steam in the last few weeks, especially in the wake of EA’s closure of Visceral, and cancellation of their Star Wars game, citing the fact that it was a traditional single player game as the reason for doing so.
It’s a baffling stance to take, saying that single player games are dead- especially when this year has seen so many high quality single player experiences, with Zelda, Horizon, Nier, Persona, Resident Evil, and Prey, with Wolfenstein, Assassin’s Creed, and Mario still to come. But it looks like some industry officials are increasingly of the opinion that matters are not as clear cut now as they used to be in this regard.
Speaking to Gamespot, Xbox head of first party games said that the economics of single player games are growing ‘complicated’.
“I don’t think that [single player games are] dead per se,” Loftis said, while acknowledging the success of single player games and publishers on the market. “I do think the economics of taking a single-player game and telling a very high fidelity multi-hour story get a little more complicated. Gamers want higher fidelity and they want higher resolution graphics.”
Loftis went on to say that monetization options for traditional games, such as Xbox Game Pass, might go on to generate consistent and sustained revenue that could fund them in this growing landscape- which, I don’t know what the per game breakdown of Game Pass revenue would be, but if it helps out with keeping traditional experiences alive, I am all for it.
In the meanwhile, I will be enjoying my favorite games of the year, such as Zelda and Persona– powerful single player experiences which could never have been recreated by any multiplayer game.