COD 4 is a good example of why Devs should focus more on a single player experience. After hearing how short it was it went from my definate buy list to my definate rent list. 5 hrs on normal is unaceptable one night and the game was done. I was able to play through the majority of the game on vetran playing off and on in the week that I had it.As fun as it was If I would have bought it I would have felt riped off.
10-12 hr campaigns are aceptable to me for a shooter thats typically the sweet spot just before repition starts to get on your nerves. I sure there are plenty more out there that feel as I do. In my case it would have resulted in a sale instead of a rental.
I have to say people over hype the importance of live. Currently there are 1,124,091 individual accounts associated with COD4 on live. Compare that to the 6.8 million in sales the 360 version of the game has accumulated. Now take in to account multiple gamertags per system and silver memberships. So thats about 5.6 million owners left after a short campaign going WTF thats all there is? I gues I better gets some friends together to play split screen if I want my moneys worth. There are a lot(close to half) of 360 owners out there that dont use live at all.
Split screen is fun and I still play it every now and then at a friends house but when we get more than 4 players together COD4 gets put away. Have to break out GR2 and unfortunatly Halo3 when its split screen lan party time.
Anyway my point is that if you are going to have both multiplayer and single player experiences there needs to be a balance between them. One should not suffer for the other. A fully polished product can do both well and please both player types.
