Some people were. Last gen, MP was where it was at. Publishers were saying that SP games were too much, or their actions made it seem like they don’t care. Spencer was correct that SP games are difficult. Something he’s often misquoted for….although that difficulty shouldn’t be a concern for MS who produces their own games without as much outside investment. At least in context. Fewer investors are willing to take the risk on such games anymore, although there are some that recognize that the market for them is still pretty high.
Most 3rd party publishers either co-opt indie devs, or they still use outside investment for making internal studio games. Why spend your own money when you can spend other people’s money? This is why SP games are difficult, and don’t have the same “impact”, because impact refers to the return on investment, which has a much higher percentage for a successful MP games. Things like Fortnite for instance, probably had 6 digit percentage returns on investment for any outside investor. Destiny probably a 4 digit percentage ROI. Things like Spider-Man, which sold over 10 million copies maybe a 2-3 digit ROI, assuming it had outside investment.
Given this, its easy to see why the lower investment into a MP game, with a much higher return potential, makes more sense to investors than a lower percentage on a riskier SP game. Not all investors think like this, and some truly do love the industry, but when we’re talking millions of dollars, they still want to see a return.
An interesting phenomenon happened this gen. Fewer big publishers put out multitudes of big AAA games. This spread out the available content, and the available games got more attention because of it. The mid-tiers also saw a boost in their discovery and sales.
It’s kind of what Sony found out about their big games last gen, the trend from them I believe starting because of the delays. They found if you release them during the part of the years where game releases are slow, you tend to sell a lot of them, as they’re about the only thing that the media and community has to pay attention to that’s worth anything. It was free advertising, for a market which doesn’t play games based on seasons. They still got the sales for the holidays as well, and made great additions for bundles for the all important black friday events.
This has led publishers to not try and cram all their big games into the holiday season. At least not the SP ones, so they are selling better instead of being called a failure because they couldn’t compete with 20 other SP titles all releasing between Sep-Oct, along with all the mega franchises like Madden, COD, and whatever new big AAA MP game was also coming out that season.
All these things combined have led to more investor faith in such projects, and while it wasn’t what it was last gen where it seemed like 2-3 big games were releasing every week except for the summer months, it’s certainly not as grim as it seemed late last gen.
Publishers are still chasing after the GaaS or MP mega-hits, but they aren’t completely ignoring the SP market anymore. Square Enix in particular has been doing pretty well here. Sony and Nintendo have had some pretty big successes this gen too. MS has had a few, and would probably have more if they made more.
in the end, SP, MP, GaaS, F2P, or any other anacronym one can come up with will ebb and flow. Trends change, disappear, get reinvented, reappear, and go up and down all the time. Next gen, MP mega-hits like Destiny or Fortnite may be looked at as SP was, and sometimes still is this gen or last. They will still exist, but they may not take so much of the focus.
