Phil Harrison:Wii Sports is a true 'next-generation' game

[Bodhesatva]

Torillian said:

Bodhesatva said:

Still the best game of the generation for me.

However, this is about "next generation"-ness, and not quality. If that means graphics or something, I disagree, but I do feel that it will easily be the most influential title this decade.

We'll be seeing more games like Wii Sports and less games like Final Fantasy in the future, that I feel quite confident of.

Hope you're wrong about that last part Bod...I have no problem with games like Wii Sports....but I love story driven games to play by myself like Final Fantasy....and if we see less of those because of Wii Sports then I will be very sad.

It's just the way things are going, clearly. RPGs -- heck, even single player games in general -- are clearly on the decline, and party/casual or hardcore/multiplayer are clearly on the rise. Consider the best selling games of the last year, selling over, say, 3 million units (let me know if I'm missing anything):

World of Warcraft
Halo 3
Super Mario Galaxy
Wii Sports
Wii Play
Guitar Hero II/III
Call of Duty 4
Madden 08
Mario Party 8
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games

Am I missing any? I think that's it. I see one RPG on that list, and it's a hugely multiplayer game. I see precisely one game on there that's single player focused, Mario Galaxy. The rest are either entirely multi-player driven (Mario Party, Wii Play, Wii Sports) or significantly multiplayer dependant (CoD4, Halo 3 are, I believe, multiplayer experiences first, single player games second, as evidenced by their 5-10 hour single player campaigns).

I think we'll see some similarly bad signs for single player games in the coming year: I think FF XIII, as a great example, will sell well, but continue the decline in sales we've been seeing for the franchise over the last decade (it isn't a straight line down, but FF VII sold better than XIII sold better than IX sold about as well as X sold better than XII).

In short, sales suggest that single player, story driven gaming is on the wane, and multiplayer games -- be they casual like Wii Sports, hardcore like Call of Duty 4, or somewhere in between like Smash Brothers -- are all on the incline. 

I'm not saying single player games are going to go away completely, mind you: they're just less significant now than they were before.