Shuhei Yoshida explains Eight Days, Getaway cancellations

Uncharted is undoubtedly a great game, but it didn't blow out the sales charts. Unless you're a game with name recognition like MGS or GTA (which both, btw, have multiplayer), you're just not going to sell that much with a single player game. People have so many alternative ways to get games these days that one-off experiences don't sell as well. You can borrow from a friend, rent from gamefly or blockbuster, or buy secondhand from gamestop or ebay.

Compare Uncharted's sales to COD4, which isn't even exclusive to the PS3. COD4 blows it out of the water in the sales department even though both games got stellar reviews.

Even single player games on the 360 don't do that well. Look at Bioshock and Mass Effect... two of the highest rated games on the 360 - their sales can't compete even with mediocre online games.

I think the major selling point for online games is the social aspect and the replayability. If all your friends are playing Team Fortress 2 all the time, you're going to be more likely to pick it up yourself. If all your friends are playing Uncharted, well, you can't play *with* them, so there's less peer pressure to buy the game. Plus, if a game can be played for hundreds of hours because it has such high replayability, it will almost negate the effects of secondary markets, since buyers will want to keep their copy of the game in order to be able to play it more and more.

Hashbrown Hunter said exactly what I was thinking. Not too worried about the Getaway, but Eight Days looked like it had something different going on and I was really excited for it when I saw it at E3 'o5. Online is great for replayability, but the single player component is way more engrossing for me. Single player games still sell, and not everybody wants to get online and get cursed out by racists and immature jerks everytime they load up a game.

Even though they looked good, I can assure you they wouldnt sell very well. Sadly this is what the world has come to these days. Excellent games like Uncharted, Ratchet (which for a long time couldnt break the 1 mil mark, god knows if it end up did) cant compete.

Even though they're great games, you see crap like the wii fit or some mario does sonic game and it sells kajillions.

I dont blame Sony changing their market segment, with a wii-like controller coming and a need for more casual games. Sadly this will be the trend, the only big real single player titles will come from multiplat games or big exclusives from non-sony devs i.e. MGS4.

Sony will focus on making more profit and more appeal to the casual gamer, thats why in their eyes bubblegum and popcorn games will come first. Sigh.

When's the last time you ever heard of anything coming *off* the back burner? There's no such thing as cancelling in the gaming world. It's not like they'll throw away the hard drives with the code on it. But they'll probably never pick it up again either.

Indeed. "Has their head on straight" if you're a multiplayer freak. If you prefer single player, they've obviously got their head on wrong.

lol i would have to disagree with box art being more important than online play. I know what you mean though, theres so many multiplayer games that arent multiplayer with those sitting right beside you (unless they're sitting right beside with their own tv, ps3 & game) which sucks.

I think a great game is made up of both strong single player and multiplayer components. Warhawk was great (as long as you had an internet connection) but COD was better and not just for the obvious reasons, but because it had like 5-10 hours worth of a AAA single player component along with a AAA multiplayer component. Going exclusively one way or another will not doom a game (such as warhawk) but I think consumers understand they get more value with a game with multiplayer.

On a side note, if everything is going so heavily multiplayer side, cant we at least have bots? remember those??? They were good for many reasons, but no one inlcudes them anymore (cept UT3 and I presume pc games still have em)

@PS3Darklighter-- Call of Duty 4 is overrated. Actually CoD4 is the exception -- for me -- rather than the rule. The single player is OKAY, honestly it's pretty much CoD set in the present. Which means restrictively-linear, cinematic, squad based fps. It doesn't take any chances with it's boring-as-hell run-of-the-mill story. I have issues with the all too convenient way Infiniti Ward raised the difficulty of later levels, as well (time trials, all enemies have RPG's, etc.). And I beat it in 2 days. Let's put it this way: The online multiplayer is the ONLY reason to buy the game. The lobby system should be fixed, and there are lots of assholes, but other than that it's great.

Warhawk was a fun 10 minutes? Half a million players disagree, then again, I kinda see your point. It was one of the few games where, in the interest of a timely release, the single player campaign was scrapped.

I think games should be evenly split into two categories: online and offline. Some games just aren't meant to be online (Oblivion) and some games are. Although online gaming is hot there's still a market for single player games like MGS4 and Uncharted.

PSN works fine. In some ways it's superior to xbox live.

Which way is that? The ability to select your server? That could be considered both a pro and a con for some people. I for one don't want to bother with that. I just want to play. If I wanted to browse through a server list I would play on the PC.

The key to online play is the community. That isn't there. There are people. Not everyone has a headset so communication isn't there. Try to track what your friends are doing. Good luck with that. Send them an invite to join the game you are playing. Good luck with that.

I'm not saying PSN CAN'T be superior to XBL. It CAN. It just isn't yet so they should concentrate on single player until they get it right (or built at all for that matter.)

They are building a home without a foundation. No pun intended. You fanboys can vote me down all you want, you can't deny the truth. The infrastructure needs help and it needs it now BEFORE all these online multi-player games hit the market.

Interesting side effect of PSN being free: Since the PS3 is gaining in popularity and people everywhere can play online for free, jerks are reproducing. There aren't any repercussions for bad actions. Sure it takes a lot to get banned from XBL but the option is there and it hurts. You don't get your money back for your online idiocy. That's a penalty. You are a jerk on PSN playing GRID and trying to make everyone crash into you on the final lap instead of actually racing. What is the worst they can actually do. Vote to kick you. Big deal.

Actually I take some of that back, what's being reported is not what was actually said. It still disheartens me to think that online components are even a factor in a game's cancelation though.

You are wrong, saying a game has to have an online component is just as bad as saying online only. There's no point in forcing online components into a game that they aren't right for, and there's no reason to compromise a single player experience for the addition of an online component. Even Microsoft and their strict Live requirements they put on developers know that.

Would you have liked Fumito Ueda to dumb down a masterpiece like Ico just to force some online component into the game? Or worse yet have it canceled?

As recently as last year we had a game in Bioshock sell tremendously and vie for awards across the board while not having an online component. Whether or not a game has an online component should have zero influence on it when deciding if a game should or should not be finished, it should stand alone as a quality game and marketable product or not.

One of the things that has made Sony so great is that they were willing to take chances, make games that didn't subscribe to some list of conventions or a PR mandated checklist. That a single component not specific to the game itself can become a make or break point is bad, and it makes me apprehensive for the future under this new executive.

"...saying a game has to have an online component is just as bad as saying online only."

How exactly?

I have eleven PS3 games including COD4, RFoM, Motorstorm, F1CE and GT5P. I have only ever gone online on Motorstorm. You can buy a game with an online option and not exercise it you know.

But are you really saying all these games suffered from having an online option? That their offline portions aren't worthwhile? I beg to differ.

You make it sound like this is something coming in the future yet this is where gaming is already at, right now.

PS And the gaming charts over the last year show Yoshida et al are right and you are wrong. This is the future of gaming. Live with it or buy a PS One.

Agreed with Burns. Jay, that list of racers and shooters support the benefits of having both, but consider Resistance: Fall of Man, whose single player experience is so totally different from the multiplayer. If they had been a smaller company, or if the resistance project hadn't been able to justify the amount of man-years it took to make to Sony/Insomniac, there might not have been time to make both on and offline game modes. Each would be inferior to how they are now, or one would be cut, most likely the multiplayer. (What good is humans vs aliens multiplayer when there is no background story?) Sony are now saying this is the wrong direction, and that they would have pulled the plug if this was so.

Furthermore, some games, usually story driven, just don't work in multiplayer, and can't even be completely redesigned to have it. Assassins Creed. The game wouldn't be the same if you weren't the only one who could do the things you could. The same goes for other games with a lot of NPCs like Elder Scrolls. Also, can you imagine something like Tomb Raider with a multiplayer mode? Broken Sword? Resident Evil? Single player adventure games basically. Sure you can have coop, but maybe you're supposed to do it alone to get the best out of it. All of the above would be axed and erased from existence, or worse, become XBox exclusives if Sony encourages this further.