Atari moving on from single-player gaming, says Harrison
- Posted May 23rd, 2008 at 07:45 EDT by Mike Harradence
- 17 Comments
Infograms President Phil Harrison has conceded that the forthcoming Alone in the Dark may be Atari's last major single-player orientated videogame.
Speaking to Gamasutra, Harrison stated that the company plans to move away from the traditional single-player gaming experience, focusing more on the online social gaming sector.
“I don’t see that we’re going to be making huge-budget, single-player games in the future,” said Harrison.
“Now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have ambition to do really incredible games that have high quality, high execution, and high innovation, but they won’t be one-player, narrative-driven, start-middle-end games.”
Alone in the Dark is due out next month on PlayStation 2, PC Wii and Xbox 360, with a PlayStation 3 version following this fall.
Email
Related Content
Comments
-
-
-
-
Solidus_Snake223
- 4:21am EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 4
You say that single player games are getting old, how will you feel when all games have small shallow stories to rush you through to the online. Some games I play for the online liek SOCOM. but many of my friends love the single player in them , im tired of so many games getting crap stories and play in single player just so they can focus more to online, sometimes I DONT like dealing with people that why I play games to escape from the Aholes
-
-
-
mikeghtmare
- 8:08am EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 7
I don't like how they assume everyboyd want to play online, some of us don't have the time or the broadband bandwidth to play online.
I love single-player games so I hope they continue to make them.
Unless it's a FPS shooter, then online capabilities shouldn't be a priority. -
bracomadar
- 8:39am EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 8
While you can really push the graphics and gameplay on singleplayer (Oblivion), not including some form of multiplayer with a game does deminish it's play value by A LOT. With a singleplayer game, I usually play through it once in about a week, or two. A good multiplayer game gets played for months, or years even. I usually rent, or borrow singleplayer games off of my friends, but if it's multiplayer, I buy my own copy. What they're doing is a good business decision I think. For people without a whole lot of money to blow on games, the decision to get this game, or that, for me at least, comes down to how long I am going to play that game and the truth is that the multiplayer game wins out over singleplayer games about 95% of the time.
-
Blue Pharoh
- 12:05pm EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 9
I guess that means I won't be buying another game from Atari. Am I the only one who couldn't give a rats a** about having multiplayer in every game released?
-
-
Alpha2
- 3:56pm EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 11
I guess I wount be buying anymore atari games then. Seriously online is starting to ruin gaming and the ability to tell a well crafted story. I'm so glad GTA didn't fall into this trap but at the same time there are other games that have sacrificed a decent single player like an after thought just to pump the multiplayer and now this shows a horrifing possibility of it continueing.
Multiplayer should be an extention of a game, not the game itself, multiplayer gets boring when people fall into worse repetative patterns than AI oppoenents. When people discover the strongest weapon or a glitch that they can exploit they immediatly do it over and over again making a game no fun anymore because the only positive aspect of fighting a real person, their unpredictability, gets washed away in a sea of SUCK.
-
evilmonkey501
- 4:02pm EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 12
I understand why they are doing this, but it doesn't mean I like it. I have unlimited bandwidth, and I barely play online at all. why? because I'm not particularly fond of fps's....(except for the occasional stellar title like cod4). I hope this doesn't spell the end of FUN in videogames. It seems like dev's only want to make shooters, because thats all these 14 year old kids (parents) are buying. c'mon and give us some love! quit rehashing the same concepts and come up w/ something NEW.
The only online game I'm actually looking forward to?>>>>>>Little Big Planet......
and ditto alpha2!
-
Staticneuron
- 5:27pm EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 13
"one-player, narrative-driven, start-middle-end games"
Good thats the type of game I like. I can write atari off in most future purchases.
I agree with everything you said alpha2. It seems if certain people have their way then most games would be judged by their MP instead of single player content and the storylines of most game will become like summer blockbuster popcorn fare because there should be more gameplay than cutscenes.... you know...... like the incredibly powerful gears of war story.
-
princevegeta1980
- 9:47pm EDT - May 23rd, 2008
- 14
For me multi-player features is more of a plus for a game, cod4 has an ecxellent single player story and the online is a great bonus. Single player games have more intruiging stories, if dev's stop to do this it will be like shooting themself's in the foot, concentrating unikly on multiplayer or online is gonna ruin good games.
-
-
lurkingshadow89
- 10:16pm EDT - May 30th, 2008
- 16
looks like some one is thinking all online. not a bad idea at all for atari. alot of the games would be great online.
-
This will permanently ban this user and delete all associated comments. This action is irreversible, are you SURE you want to do this?!
