Vice: Internal Sony documents show that single player is thriving, PlayStation users spend more time playing offline games than online ones

[Enduin]

Only reason I'll end up buying a PS5 is because of the same reason I eventually ended up buying a PS3 and PS4, there was a solid 5+ singleplayer games only available on there that I wanted to play. MP means nothing to me. Especially on consoles. I find them to be too much of a time sink and chore to keep up with and stay engaged with and just all around not as fun and enjoyable as single player games.

Activities don't seem very relevant to me and my needs, but they sound like a very smart system that could help a lot of people who are short on time or have a big gap between sessions and need help picking things back up.

 

[Carn]

You must be. Activities generally shows me my next, or current mission if I stopped playing in the middle of it. It shows me side stories, and crimes as well.

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Yeah but the weird thing is that they did show when I started playing, but all I see now are trophy related things (that are greyed out). I do think that maybe it has to do with the fact that I had installed both versions in the beginning, I'm kinda having the feeling that I'm seeing the "PS4 cards".

 

[Iron Eddie]

I'm not sure how we ended up having such division among gamers. Why can't we have both single player and online games and not have people suggesting one is better than the other? It reminds me of game streaming, people thinking this is the end of hardware. People just tend to over react and argue against something they don't like even though they have alternatives.

Obviously it's working for Sony having great single player games that have good support to sell well but not every single player game has a success story, just like online games. EA is finally learning a game like Star War Jedi Knight can do well, not very game needs to be a GaaS type title. Anthem failed by comparison.

 

[Astronut325]

"Forgot what I was doing in this game last time, hard to get back in"

I relate to this so much

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+1 here! I get 1 hour of game time a month. This is a literal game changer for me.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

The setup around single player games in the UI has definitely contributed to my willingness to dive into trophies. Never really been a Platinum chaser but I can tell that I'll be adding Bugsnax and Miles Morales to my completion list because of Game Help and features like it.

Frictionless is probably the right word for their approach and I'm very on board with it.

 

[Pop-O-Matic]

is this something people were not expecting? why wouldn't single player games be thriving? figure you'd need to put in way more effort to get a multiplayer game going than single.

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The narrative from execs, insiders and pundits for literally an entire decade has been "single player is dying, always online multiplayer experiences are the inevitable future of gaming," and way too may people have been willing to buy that line of rhetoric without a second thought.

 

[Tora]

They did have a patent where you could save "states" if I remember correctly and could then send it to friends so they can try out what you did in the game if I remember correctly. If that happens it could be really awesome.

Could also be good for convincing people to try out games and then buy them.

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Yeah, that sounds so good

 

[Valanarro]

They tried that during the PS3 days. None of them took off. Then they started pushing out high-end single-player games...and here we are.

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True. As much as I have been enjoying much of their single player output as of late, I would like to see them give it another attempt in the near future. Feels like the one big thing they're missing from their first party output, especially when they've got some dormant big name IPs that might benefit from a new breath of life.

 

[KAMI-SAMA]

I love single player games. The last multiplayer game I really played with enthusiasm was Uncharted 4 and bit of Modern Warfare from last year. I used to play online games a lot more when I was younger. But as I got older, I started having a lot less time for games and started playing more single player games instead.

I wonder... are the younger gamers from yester years now the busy adults who love to game but can't devote as much time as they used to? Single player is thriving because those gamers grew up and realized single player games are the best way to game with limited time.

 

[Deleted member 8468]

Activities is a really great feature that I fear will be underutilized by everyone except first party.

Cool to hear single player stuff is going strong.

 

[platocplx]

Only reason I'll end up buying a PS5 is because of the same reason I eventually ended up buying a PS3 and PS4, there was a solid 5+ singleplayer games only available on there that I wanted to play. MP means nothing to me. Especially on consoles. I find them to be too much of a time sink and chore to keep up with and stay engaged with and just all around not as fun and enjoyable as single player games.

Activities don't seem very relevant to me and my needs, but they sound like a very smart system that could help a lot of people who are short on time or have a big gap between sessions and need help picking things back up.

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Games ending is not a bad thing at all and I enjoy that. Which doesn't happen in a multiplayer game.

 

[SolidSnakex]

True. As much as I have been enjoying much of their single player output as of late, I would like to see them give it another attempt in the near future. Feels like the one big thing they're missing from their first party output, especially when they've got some dormant big name IPs that might benefit from a new breath of life.

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We'll be seeing more attempts. There's Factions from Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla has been staffing multiplayer devs. They hired the director of Rainbow Six Siege (who's currently directing a game for them) and one of Siege's online and multiplayer designers.

 

[FIREKNIGHT2029]

That is definitely me. I spend a lot more time playing single player games than I do multiplayer games. I also like the activities feature for PS5 open world games like Spiderman because it allows me to quickly jump in and complete an activity and gives me the approximate time that activity will take so I can know if it's worth my time at the moment.

 

[Deleted member 5725]

Keep them coming, Sony.

 

[Rover_]

keep em' coming, Sony :)

 

[KAMI-SAMA]

Not just Activities but Game Help too. Shit is amazing. Used it a lot in Bugsnax lol Saved me a ton of time.

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Oh man I forgot about this. How do you activate game help?

 

[Hale-XF11]

Well, they do make the best single player games ever.

 

[platocplx]

I'm not sure how we ended up having such division among gamers. Why can't we have both single player and online games and not have people suggesting one is better than the other? It reminds me of game streaming, people thinking this is the end of hardware. People just tend to over react and argue against something they don't like even though they have alternatives.

Obviously it's working for Sony having great single player games that have good support to sell well but not every single player game has a success story, just like online games. EA is finally learning a game like Star War Jedi Knight can do well, not very game needs to be a GaaS type title. Anthem failed by comparison.

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I think it's more people have a lot of bias against single player than just saying one is better than the other. Things are dominated by these multiplayer games and people would love to see more companies actually craft better single player and not always have to feel they have to include multiplayer at the cost of single.

 

[Christmastree55]

This is surprising and really great to see.

That said, y'all have a fucking vendetta against multiplayer games. One isn't better than the other.

 

[platocplx]

Oh man I forgot about this. How do you activate game help?

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Expand activity while in level and if there is game help it will tell you certain things that are missing and how to accomplish them

 

[illmatic22]

This is surprising and really great to see.

That said, y'all have a fucking vendetta against multiplayer games. One isn't better than the other.

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Nah, it's just my preference. I'm fine with them existing for those that enjoy them.

 

[Iron Eddie]

I think it's more people have a lot of bias against single player than just saying one is better than the other. Things are dominated by these multiplayer games and people would love to see more companies actually craft better single player and not always have to feel they have to include multiplayer at the cost of single.

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I've seen it from both sides.

It's no secret the industry has been pushing for longer engagement with the gamer by adding multiplayer to franchises that used to mainly focus on single player. Which has resulted from those on the forums speaking out against online titles.

 

[Christmastree55]

Nah, it's just my preference. I'm fine with them existing for those that enjoy them.

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Sure, that's perfectly fine. But I could quote several posters in here saying "single player is better" and that's just bizarre to me.
It's not even like I prefer multiplayer games. It's just weird.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

This is surprising and really great to see.

That said, y'all have a fucking vendetta against multiplayer games. One isn't better than the other.

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In terms of hours, I play more multiplayer than anything. But on my phone.

I think I've gotten into a multiplayer experience on a console seriously--- twice? One of those was on PS2, lol. The other was a PS3 launch game.

 

[Mung]

Good. I remember when devs were trying to shoehorn multiplayer crap into every game. No thanks.

 

[KodaRuss]

This is me for sure. I have only just barely used the activities stuff but the ingame help is fantastic. Especially for a game like Bugsnax... Some of the bugs can be pretty complicated to catch.

I don't usually play unless I have a minimum of an hour or two of free time and nothing is more annoying that spending an hour to get nothing done.

 

[James Sawyer Ford]

Multiplayer gaming seems to be a winner takes all kind of space

yeah, those winners do ridiculous numbers, but it's very hard to take away their territorial base

I feel like those that like single player experiences aren't as fickle. We'll buy the next game as long as it's great quality

MP games have higher frictions with existing GaaS titles

 

[platocplx]

I've seen it from both sides.

It's no secret the industry has been pushing for longer engagement with the gamer by adding multiplayer to franchises that used to mainly focus on single player. Which has resulted from those on the forums speaking out against online titles.

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Yeah. I think more people would be okay with the approach GTA/RD online Has and even what Sony is doing with ghosts and factions. Spin off online versions than doing half baked versions of either mode.

 

[Just That Simple]

Isn't that basically down to Persona 5 and Persona 5 Royal heavily skewing the data though? If those two games didn't exist, Sony would be singing a very different tune right about now.

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Please be a joke. You can't honestly be that damn stupid to think that trash like Persona means anything.

 

[KodaRuss]

Good. I remember when devs were trying to shoehorn multiplayer crap into every game. No thanks.

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Lot of failures for sure but there have been some gems (The Last of Us Factions comes to mind).

This was kinda after the fad but Ghost of Tsushima's multiplayer is awesome and was not needed at all.

 

[Valanarro]

We'll be seeing more attempts. There's Factions from Naughty Dog, and Guerrilla has been staffing multiplayer devs. They hired the director of Rainbow Six Siege (who's currently directing a game for them) and one of Siege's online and multiplayer designers.

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Good to know, I must've missed that. Hope it does well to fill the gap.

 

[criteriondog]

Activity cards are truly great. Used them in Sackboy, Astro, and Miles. The helpful videos are really, really nice. Don't need to pull out my phone.

 

[OCD Guy]

This is very good info about how those "quick activities" features work in PS5. Although it seems that it's still in the development, I think.

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I've just tried this in Spider-Man Remastered and it's not working like that at all.

It's not fast travelling me anywhere just putting a waypoint on the map lol. I pressed square on a main mission which was far away and it just put the waypoint on.

Tried it on Tombstone side mission and same thing, just a waypoint to the blue icon when I press square.

Am I doing something wrong or does activities simply not work like that in the remastered version?! Push the playstation button, select the card, press square or go into it and select play is what I've done.

It's pretty pointless singing the praises of activity cards if it doesn't even work the same way in every game.

 

[Sprat]

They should evolve it furthur and let you create a "playlist" or something. It could help with open worlds if you just want to do one particular activity or just the story.

Like imagine playing Spider Man but you don't want to do anything other than the story so you could make it so the game switches from mission to mission after doing one and the other.

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This would be ideal for every open world game for how I play them.

The open world typically is just an inconvenience while getting from a-b for me

 

[KodaRuss]

Please be a joke. You can't honestly be that damn stupid to think that trash like Persona means anything.

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Not really sure what the comment about Persona being trash is but Sony's single player games have gotten very long recently.

God of War
The Last of Us
Ghost of Tsushima
Days Gone

All over 20 hours I believe? I havent finished Days Gone or GOT yet.

 

[Geode]

I wonder if having to pay for online is part of the reason? It seems that people I know play multiplayer games on PC.

 

[Sprat]

I've just tried this in Spider-Man Remastered and it's not working like that at all.

It's not fast travelling me anywhere just putting a waypoint on the map lol. I pressed square on a main mission which was far away and it just put the waypoint on.

Tried it on Tombstone side mission and same thing, just a waypoint to the blue icon when I press square.

Am I doing something wrong or does activities simply not work like that in the remastered version?! Push the playstation button, select the card, press square or go into it and select play is what I've done.

It's pretty pointless singing the praises of activity cards if it doesn't even work the same way in every game.

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You press the playstation button and select the card for what you want

 

[Paquete_PT]

This data could be a little biased, because most sony first-party games don't have an online component.
I'm more of a single-player narrative-based games, that's why I play on playstation, I'm the exact gamer they cater to. That being said, I'm missing a good multiplayer game from them and would like to see them try something in that area.

 

[OCD Guy]

You press the playstation button and select the card for what you want

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That's what I've done, tap the playstation button (don't hold as that put you on xmb) then select the card you'd like, press square or go into it and select play.

I'm expecting to fast travel, but it just puts a waypoint lol.

I've not tried it on Miles Morales yet.

edit: right I've tried again, if I select an activity like a research lab it will fast travel me, but on a main mission or side mission all it does is put a waypoint on the map. Pretty pointless in spider-man remastered.

 

[KodaRuss]

Activity cards are truly great. Used them in Sackboy, Astro, and Miles. The helpful videos are really, really nice. Don't need to pull out my phone.

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The thing I like about the ingame help is that it is both written out and a video. So you can just read the tip and get it or if you need some detail you can watch the video and pin it inside the screen and watch it while you play.

 

[TheGhost]

I'm having a hard time thinking there is more people playing single player games than multiplayer games.

 

[TradedHats]

Playing "Melody of Memory" on my PS5 and wishing so much that I could just jump into certain modes via activity cards. People should not be writing them off.

 

[Cordy]

Dope. That's my wheelhouse.

 

[Matty H]

I always felt the reason it seemed like singleplayer was dying on PS3/360 was because you didn't need to connect to the internet back then and Sony/MS wouldn't have been getting all the offline stats.
I'm sure PS4/X1 have way more metrics being recorded in offline mode and also people basically have to have these machines connected to the internet now.

 

[BlackheartVinyl]

Bummer, I guess they'll continue making games not for me. I see very little reason to play single-player games.

 

[Croc Man]

This sounds fantastic, hate having 20 minutes left to play and no way of knowing if the next mission will last 10 minutes or an hour.

 

[Deleted member 862]

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if that's mostly what you make. I bet Microsoft have data that shows people mostly play online.

 

[Javier]

The company then outlined what players say are their problems with single player games:

• "No idea how long I might need, don't play unless I have 2+ free hours"
• "Takes a lot of time to scan through long help videos when stuck"
• "How to engage socially without risk of spoilers"
• "Forgot what I was doing in this game last time, hard to get back in"

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Holy shit, Sony knows me better than myself!!!!!!

 

[SubvertedTrope]

They should evolve it furthur and let you create a "playlist" or something. It could help with open worlds if you just want to do one particular activity or just the story.

Like imagine playing Spider Man but you don't want to do anything other than the story so you could make it so the game switches from mission to mission after doing one and the other.

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This is a great idea, I haaate open world traversal and I just fast travel eveywhere which leads to constant loading screens. Ugh open world games.

 

[Deleted member 7148]

I play single player games 95% of the time, so yeah this is good news that hopefully more dev teams will focus on great single player experiences. The only game I really play multiplayer anymore is Phasmophobia with friends.