Multiplayer Longevity to Tackle Used Game Market

It’s impossible to deny the scale of Modern Warfare 2‘s multiplayer draw. It’s also impossible to overlook the much reported brevity of its single-player campaign. In a recent interview with The LA Times, ol’ Smiler Bobby Kotick seemed to suggest not only that multiplayer longevity justified the title’s inflated RRP, but that it was a hearty defence against the burgeoning used game market. “The challenge of used games”, often scorned by Kotick and friends (who certainly need the money), is that they garner no revenue for the industry itself.

For gamers uninterested in shooting loud-mouth strangers over broadband, this small statement seems to hold large repercussions. While all developers wish for online successes like the runaway Call of Duty train, games seldom command a continued, social interest outside of the occasional championing series. Now, for Kotick to see multiplayer as delivering “hundreds or thousands of hours of gameplay for about the same price as taking a family to the movies”, it seems perhaps inevitable that the increase in suggested retail prices will run hand-in-hand with the drop in attention paid to creating expansive single player worlds.

If one of today’s most powerful industry figure-heads foregrounds multiplayer as being key to supporting the apparently waivering financial success of the videogames market, how heavily is the solo experience likely to take the hit? Current generation, top title solo campaigns are certainly recognised as having become tighter packed and streamlined.

As more and more cash is thrown at middling titles in an effort to bolster their online components, it seems reasonable to suggest that we may see a prevalence in lacklustre, mainstream plotting; the potential for player dispersion amongst the increasing wave of triple A titles in multiplayer rotation; and an un-ending sea of map-pack DLC.

Via: Spong