Two publishers believe that single-player titles are far from dead.
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s president, David Haddad, spoke with GamesBeat about why the publisher still strongly supports single-player games: „The perfect thing you brought up there is world-building. You know our slate well. In the past, and in as you’d probably guess the present, we have a history of building great worlds with great mechanics. Many of them are single-player. We continue to believe that even as esports grows, even as time spent playing multiplayer grows, there’s still a compelling space for narrative, storytelling, world-building, long-term engagement games. We know that’s not everybody’s approach in the industry. How you find those gamers, how you service them, and how you publish inside this time-spent environment, you have to pay attention to that, but we still believe there’s a place for that.”
Haddad also talked about the Games-as-a-Service (GaaS) model (example: Final Fantasy XV by Square Enix), calling it a practical solution: „At the same time, we have a point of view where great games, because of the digital nature of publishing, have never lasted long. It may sound too much like an investment theme, but building a great game is a long-term asset. There are lots of ways to be able to have those delighting gamers for years and years in the new delivery systems, the new ecosystems of gaming. As a content creator, committing to quality, delighting gamers–we’re fortunate to have some long-term franchises that gamers have loved for years. It leaves our confidence in building for the future very high.”
Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two, who also had harsh words towards Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, shared similarly positive thoughts with GamesBeat at E3: „Historically, in entertainment, people take positions like that, but there are also people saying that it won’t work if it’s not a free-to-play battle royale. People are saying that, and not even tongue-in-cheek. I don’t buy that. Single-player, in my opinion, is not dead, not even close. Companies that feel like they’ll avoid the hard work of building a story and characters and go right to where the money is in multiplayer, I don’t think that’s going to work. I’d be surprised.”
Even Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, was supportive of single-player games. These three opinions cover a large chunk of the gaming industry…
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