Absolutely. You don't see anyone knocking Team Fortress 2's single player game, right?

Single player got the short end of the stick in Halo 3. And that's fine...if that's what was advertised. Halo 1 had a damn fine single player experience. Halo 2 was still a pretty good single player experience. Halo 3 was meh. Had I known, I just would have rented it.

The problem, for me, is Bungie has silently shifted dev focus for Halo over the series. Since I, literally, never played online multiplayer and thus didn't track how popular it was, I had no idea that multiplayer was really the driving force behind Halo 3. I assumed it was developed with the same ratio of focus used in Halo 1.

Many of these are online games as well (sports, rock band, etc...). To ignore either side is ignorant, but games are going to focus more on multiplayer in the future since it is easier than programming AI to 'act' like players. I mean the reason I play against people is because people are smarter than any AI you could play against. This is why I liked Halo 2's multiplayer so much and why I like playing Madden online.

That's true, but irrelevant to what I responded to. The statement was made that there's no point in buying an Xbox 360 except for online play.

I pointed out a list, off the top of my head, of a bunch of reasons why people wouldn't give a crap about online play. I'm sure if I went into EBX I could write down a very long list of good single player games.

Many, like football, may also have an online component, but again, that's not relevant to the original statement "why someone would even buy an xbox360 if they didnt like online mulitplayer games".

Here I bolded what stood out to me. You said there are a lot more single player games, but many of these games are multiplayer and many people play only the multiplayer parts of these games. What I'm saying is that ignoring either is bad, but for games that have both, usually it is the case that single player trains you for the multiplayer mayhem. Buying a 360 and not putting it online is akin to playing a poker video game over playing w/ real people live or online.

Boy, you had me in agreement right up to that. Games are about entertainment. Period. How you get that entertainment and the value derived varies dramatically.

I have 4 good friends. All own 360's. None play online. 1 has a wife that plays, she doesn't play online.

I have 3 kids, 2 with Nintendo DS's. None play online.

My sample set says that no one gives a crap about online play. Clearly though, that's not true. I suspect your sample set (or mindset at least) is the opposite, but that's not the truth either.

Buying a 360 is about entertainment. If you get the most bang for your buck online, then you put it online. If, like me, you get the most bang for your buck using it as a way to escape from people, then you don't. (Well, mine is online, but for updates, downloads, etc, not gameplay).

The casual gaming market has just absolutely exploded (Peggle, Gem drop, etc, etc). There's a huge quantity of people that just want single player entertainment. Some like it shallow with casual games, others, like me, want a deeper game experience.

I never said online gaming is bad. It's fine. I just don't get a thrill out of it. When I play games with people, I want it face to face, usually with beer and conversation. When I want to compete, I play a tournament or used to play competitive sports. When I want to just escape, I want single player games.

What I don't like though are games that short change a mode to cash in. No one is bashing Bioshock for a weak multiplayer game, becaust it just isn't relevant. No one is bashing Team Fortress 2 for a weak single player game, because, again, it isn't relevant.

If you're making a game that does both, it'd better do both really well or it's going to rightfully get bashed.

bogey, just by sales it is obvious that poker video games are bought and played, and it's obvious that it is for entertainment only. Similar to 1 player IMO.

Online poker, however, is for a more competitive experience w/ something to win and lose for (bragging/level for online gaming). That was my analogy. You can escape and have a good time playing against a computer, but it's not the same intensity as playing online.

From my samples size (friends in the 20-30 range) everyone who has an internet connection plays games primarily online. The people I know who don't play online don't do it because internet is too expensive, not because they only want to play one player. We obviously have much different experiences and neither one is going to change the others mind, but the staggering stat has to be that over the first 24 hrs of H3 being released over 1 million unique users logged online to play. Obviously online play is more prevelant than you think.

I never stated it wasn't prevalent. I was addressing the bogus statement that 1 in 1000 people play Halo single player. I was stating that single player is more prevalent than you think, not that multiplayer wasn't prevalent.

A million people signed in... Halo 3 has sold $300 million in it's first week. At $60/copy that's 5 million people. I'd wager the "first 24 hours" were the most fanatic of the 5 million and heavily tilted towards online play.

--Edit: "In the twenty four hour period after the game’s release, the game had already done $170 million in sales."

So, first 24 hours sold 2.8 million, of which 1 million logged in. So, ratio of single player to multi was 1.8/1.0.
--End Edit:

How many of the 5 million people have signed in more than 1 or 2 times over the week? I have no idea. There's no way at this point to say whether online buyers are the dominate buyer though. And that's just Halo, which has grown into a multiplayer beast.

Let's look at GTA. A huge, HUGE seller....and single player. If we took GTA as representative of the average player, then we'd conclude online play meant next to nothing to sales.

bogey1, you are using anecdotal evidence to form what you4 are claiming to be a 'fact'. Anecdotal evidence means just about nothing. I have a sample size in the hundreds for the Halo series (not just 3), and not a single person played the game exclusively for single player. But again, this means just as little as your 4 man sample size because of inherent sample bias and the fact that's just anecdotal crap.

As far as the 1million playing online within 20 hours. That was unique players. And as far as the millions of sales - those include the 1.7million preorders. Many of those preorders were not delivered/picked up on the first day, including 100% of preorders through the mail. Again, there's no telling how many people actually had Halo 3 in their hands within 20 hours of launch. All that's for certain is that 1million of them were playing online multiplayer.

I didn't claim fact status at all. I just said, based on my limited sample, single player was important. And then I also said that your (whoever the other poster was) experience was likely in the other direction.

I pretty expliclity laid out that the sample sizes meant nothing as a point of countering the absurdity of the statement that only 1 in 1000 people play Halo for the single player experience.

One other thing - this was "exclusively for the offline single player mode." This means never playing online, not playing with friends, not playing coop online, etc.. I agree there are plenty of people that purchased it for the single player, but those that will never play coop [by any means] and will never play online is extremely miniscule. And this is the sort of gameplay this review focused on.

You're claiming anecdotal evidence as "fact".

You seemed to accept that most people play online. Suprised you have an issue with the claim that of those that do not play online, some significant portion do play offline with friends/family. Perhaps it is anecdotal. I thought it was established that there aren't a whole lot of people who 'lock away' their consoles, never playing online, never playing with friends or family, but who also rush out to buy new releases. Seems kind of like an extremely atypical situation. But yeah, you're right - I don't have any "proof" that that's not an extremely common situation. Ok.