Here's an article, "The Growing Illusion of Single Player"

https://games.yahoo.com/news/growing-il … 00803.html

I think the author is correct, that these days for nearly all so-called AAA titles, multiplayer comes first. Everything else, especially a single-player campaign, is secondary. Fortunately, that's not true for ALL games, including some AAA titles. In particular, RPGs still tend to be single player, although as the author notes, Diablo III was most definitely made with multi-player in mind. Since I don't like to play multiplayer games, I suppose I just won't play games like Destiny. Also, many if not most indy games still seem to be single-player minded. Still, I do agree that big-budget games are heavily into multiplayer now. The new Super Smash Bros. seems to be one such example.

I'm kind of in the same boat... I've never really been into multiplayer experiences unless you count playing Diablo II on a dial-up 56k modem back in the day. Pretty much the extent of my experiences beyond the four player split screen games like Goldeneye a few years prior to that.

Hell, I own a PS3 and I've never even taken the damn thing on-line... and with consoles becoming ever more attached to the online world the more I'm probably going to shirk away. I don't really know why, very old fashioned I guess.

However, I think the last Tomb Raider was a game that proved a game doesn't need multiplayer. Didn't they delay that game to specifically put multiplayer into it and that portion sunk like a freaking rock soon after release.

Edit: But really, if they want to keep at this and make games less appealing (to me) I ironically welcome it. The fewer reasons I have to buy one of the newer consoles - or even the ones after that -  the better.

I don't think single-player games will ever go away completely since there will always be a market for them, but I think that we are seeing the growth of multiplayer-focused games such that single-player only games make up a smaller percentage of the overall pie than they used to. As long as there are people willing to pay money for and support single-player games, someone will make them. Skyrim is the perfect example of a major AAA game with no multiplayer component that sold exceptionally well. That said, I think a lot of companies are pushing multiplayer because they want to take advantage of social pressure. If your friends talk you into committing to play with them, that's a sale. Then you all want to play the expansion pack. Several more sales. And on and on. It makes sense.

I was planning on getting a Wii-U when enough good titles (ie. Zelda, Smash Brothers) came out, but I was at the store with my friends and they convinced me to get one now so we could play Mario Kart 8.  That and even the bundled Mario game were good multi-player fun for several hours that evening and last night.  I haven't done any single player gaming on it yet, but I will probably spend some time playing it by myself to get 3-star ratings on all speeds of the Grand Prix circuits like I usually do.  There will be a ton of of single player with the two Zelda games.