Considering that the top three games on PlayStation 4 are all structured around single-player design stories like this need to cut-it-out. At this point it's just click-bait to instigate.

One.) Uncharted 4: A Thief's End
Two.) Horizon Zero Dawn
Three.) Persona 5

As long as Sony is around we will have great SP games.

No one said they're dead. The fear is that with big publishers' current focus on multiplayer, we might be starting down the path to single-player extinction. Hopefully the success of (fantastic) games like Horizon can stave off any kind of drought.

I need to fire this game back up. So so so good.

They're not, so can we move on now?

Hell yeah, my fave game of the year! Enjoyed every minute earning that platinum. More games like this please.

Anyone who says Multiplayer only games are the future are doing some bad mushrooms. Single Player is the standard, the base line and the benchmark. 100 years from now people will still be playing Super Mario Bros, Super Metroid, Zelda and Chrono Trigger.

But I can guarantee you they wont be playing Unreal Tournament or any other early multiplayer only games. Why? Because multiplayer only games simply don't stand the test of time. They burn brightly but only for a short while and then some newer flashier version will come out and then the old servers will go offline. Game Over.

Single player games are the backbone of the industry and, quite frankly, they are all that is keeping another video game crash from happening. "Gaming as a Service" "Always Online" and "Pay to Win" will ruin this industry. As gamers, we have a responsibility to shut that crap down as soon as possible for the good of all.

Nobody said they were.

@ Woolly_ Pong was multiplayer.

Where did this stupid notion of "single players are dead" coming from? Is it because of the idiots at EA shutting down visceral? Is this where this is coming from? That's just one idiot company and doesn't reflect the industry overall.

Nioh, Nier, Uncharted, Zelda, Witcher 3, Second Son, Mario, Horizon, bloodborne, and soooo many more are a testament to the power of GREAT single player games that are successful.

This argument is absolutely retarded. Has it been that dry in the gaming news outlets that we have to read made up shit? lol

I believe that Multiplayer is going to die soon if every new games coming out has a microtransactions and pay to win system, eventually people will stay away. Remember how Evolve is dead on arrival because of those crap.

The only place single player games are dead is in the black crusty souls of the big execs at huge studios who don't like that they can't bend over gamers to suck every last penny from us like they can with MP games.

Why is this such a big deal today when multiplayer games have been existence for quite awhile now? It won't be the the devs and publishers that kill the industry it's going to be all the whining and crying that constantly happens no matter what gets put out.

Nier, Horizon, Uncharted, Gravity Rush 2, Yakuza 6. Ni-Oh, & Persona 5 showed everyone how you release a complete experience first, with new bosses to fight, and deeper stories that actually finish the game. I wish developers would stop trying to hide behind pay walls and nostalgia to sell half hearted products.

No one has said singleplayer games are dead. Just more nonsense blown way out of context by the media and community because and Xbox exec said it was harder to sell a singleplayer only game. But facts are facts. Singleplayer only games are more expensive to create and don't make as much profit

I never thought they were dead and haven't heard any gamers make this claim. It's pure media BS that just came out of nowhere and was never based on any logic.

Zelda, Mario, Nier, Nioh, Horizon, Wolfenstein etc....Single Players aren't going anywhere. Variety in video games is important.

HZD, my favourite game this generation. My first platinum too.

Nothing beats chilling with some good single player when online starts to do my tits in..far from dead..

Single player games are dead when I say so!
Silly brats...

What needs to stop is Online only games. I basically rent a game for 2- 3 years max and then I can never play it again until they re release it a decade later and charge me again for it. Then they got the nerve to sell you a season pass.

Imagine you couldn't play your old SNES games or ps1 games. You would be pissed.

Let's these corps do what they do so they can go bankrupt and all that's left is real developers.

Single player games aren't Dead. They just don't hold the same value as multiplayer games... take horizon amazing game but not replay value. New DLC com8ng out (finally) but this game has long past it's shelve life for most. People have moved on

lol what? To me, HZD had all the shortcoming of a weak SP game: lame story, pointless open world with little side content, etc

mario and zelda did too...and nier...

The way I see it, most games are exclusively designed to make companies money nowadays. Due to gaming becoming a mainstream phenomenon on a global scale, the repercussions are now biting our own asses.

Say there's a group of 6.000.000 gamers. Maybe a 1.000.000 of those, if not 500.000, actually play proper offline games.
The rest are just interested in online gaming with friends, casual gameplay that requires low investment and may have MT's, or games reminiscent of that. Some are just playing because it's a cool thing now (in some circles).

When you have a vast majority of those people who buy a couple games a year, it inevitably ends up as a numbers game with checklists taking center stage.
That's where intrusive MT's come from, that's where the oversaturation of open world games come from, and that's why the GaaS model is currently being deployed.

TL:DR
The current state of the gaming industry, at least with most of the big devs, f*****g sucks -_-

In three-five years we'll probably see a major paradigm shift in how games are pushed as a product.

Hmmmm.... God of War, TLOU Part II, Detroit Become Human, Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption II, Days Gone, Death Stranding, Spider-Man, Wild, Ni No Kuni II...and that's just what I'm anticipating from Sony (plus 2 from CD Projekt and Rockstar). And not mentioning all the phenomenal single player games coming from Nintendo. Single player is the best. Always has been. When gaming gives up on single player, I give up on gaming. Nuff said.

HZD shows what SP games can do and why we need them. Also it's a freaking new IP from a FPS Studio.

Yeah they aren't dying and to me it seems only people who push this ideology are publishers and companies that push services, micro transactions and the like and don't want to invest in story driven single player games or new IP's. Thank god there are companies that still create amazing single player games. I just think it's talking points and PR spin trying to take away from the fact some companies don't invest in said single player story driven games or create new first party studios anymore. Or try to downplay those who do.

Duh!!!!!!!!!

Horizon, LoZ:Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey.

3 best games of the year......all single player.

Please do recite all of the single player games released for 2017?? Do some research before stating ridiculous things like these. If that amount of SP games is not enough to say SP are dead then I dont know what is. This article is so annoying unless they want another videogame crash where almost all games are MP only with microtransactions and Loot boxes etc. If ever that really happens, I will quit buying modern games and consoles and just settle on my old consoles. If single player is to die, its like an apocalypse for me.

This game was great.. I wanted more costume variety but thats a minor nitpick.. When single player dies, i retire the controller

Meanwhile, in GTS news: "Who had the stupid idea to make this game on online game only?"

Tell me again how the multiplatform strategy was supposed to fix everything. Look at your results and compare them to Nintendo, which keeps thriving with exclusives. Your loyal fans are gone. And let’s not forget the pile of IPs you purchased only to let them rot.

The worst thing is this is down from last years numbers/expectations which was down from the previous years numbers/expectations. You think about how long “down” has been a consistent part of the communication and you realize those subscriptions are what’s holding that boat together. The price cut of gamespass is still a price raise in a string of price raises. They are trying to use players to offset the missing revenue. Now call of duty is out of gamespass, which is literally WHY they bought the company. To draw people to the subscription. They realized they missed a boatload of money and that wasn’t sustainable. Now you pay for it like you would have if they never bought the company… so why buy the company? Mind you those billions still need to be paid back. Yeah it gives you a chance to say we make the biggest FPS… but the internal conversations must be brutal at high level on topics that really matter. Like revenue. Profitability. And ROI for the shopping spree.

Is this like the 10th quarter in a row they're down 33% on hardware how is that even mathematically possible. You would think their mediocrity would Plateau