"During an investors call, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot shared his thoughts on single-player games, and he remains positive about their potential. 'Those types of games can continue to sell for a long time,' Guillemot said. He noted that introducing mechanics like RPG elements to single-player games can increase their appeal because they extend the game's replayability. Guillemot also said that Ubisoft is working on implementing user-generated content to entice players to continue playing these kinds of titles longer periods of time."

"Ubisoft's crossover Switch game, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, is another single-player game that has been remarkably successful for the publisher. That title is the best-selling third-party game on Switch, and Ubisoft anticipates it will have a 'stronger than usual' sales tail as Nintendo continues to release more Switch consoles during the holiday season and beyond."

Taken from: Ubisoft Discusses The Future Of Single-Player Games

'potential'?

Of the 10 biggest selling games this year 7 are single player, Mario will enter that top 10 soon.

... 'potential'.

I'm not sure if this is a serious questions.

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2017/Global/

I'm including GTA5 btw.

The day single player gaming ends, is the day I stop gaming. I like sports titles, but they are 100x more fun for me when I actually have people over playing them with me. And first person shooter titles are no where near as fulfilling for me as taking on a story driven single player adventure.

I'd say that it's dependant on why the consumers bought the game. I mean, Mario has a co-op mode, but I'd hardly say that people buy the game to be able to play with Cappy xD. Not sure about the appeal of GTA Online though.

Combining single player games with some community aspects might be a cool way too. Think of the messages in Souls, or ghost data of other players in racers or Rayman. And MIiverse (*sigh*) posts displayed in Splatoon and Smash. That way the games are still single player, but use Internet to enrich the experience.

User generated content: I think of Mario Maker. The ability to create levels or other game data (Minecraft-creations for instance) and share with the community is very welcome.

Pokemon is multiplayer

Considering how much Ubi sucks at making multiplayer games this is not surprising at all^^

"He noted that introducing mechanics like RPG elements to single-player games can increase their appeal because they extend the game's replayability."

Really? Not in Ubisoft's games.

Yeah, that rule applies on the contrary too. You can only deduct why people buy those games in the first place. In the case of CoD I'd say that it definitely sells well because of the MP. Though in my case, I'd only buy a CoD game if the campaign is great, so that really varies.

Still, single-player games surely still have a lot of appeal, for sure. And I'd say that Ubisoft is better at making SP games than MP-focused games. By miles XD.