This is just a mini rant, on something that's been bothering me.  I recently bought Metroid Prime Trilogy, and have enjoyed playing the split-screen multiplayer in Prime 2 despite it not being the best, and I started thinking why do more games not have this?  Counting Metroid Prime Trilogy there are what 3 games with this option, James Bond and Red Steel being the other two? With people complaining about the only third party games that sell on the Wii being "Casual" or "party" games, it seems the obvious reason for these games is the social aspect.  Wii is a console people like to play together, so why have developers not realized this in their first person shooter games?  The online multiplayer is a great feature, but I think they are missing out on a lot of sales from word of mouth because people aren't able to play First Person shooters with their friends/family in the same room.

    I think the first game that has four player split screen, and the ability to take a guest online (like in Mario Kart Wii online), will be the first Wii FPS to cross the 2 million mark. Hopefully that will be Call of Duty: Modern Warfare because I'm tired of waiting.  Ok, rant over, but does this bother other people, or do you all care more about online multiplayer?

I agree. Part of why I'm getting MPT tomorrow is that it's the first good FPS with local multiplayer, 4 players even.

Edit: Sorry, it's a FPA but it happens to have an FPS style multiplayer with it..

A couple other games have it, like Far Cry: Vengeance and Brothers in Arms (both 2 players), but they're both best left forgotten.

This seems to be a problem this gen not just on Wii but on all consoles, and not just on FPS' but all games this gen.

On the HD games more and more opt for online multiplayer over local due to the need for the latest graphics (e.g. Resistance1 had 4 player local, R2 had 2 player, Killzone 2 only 1 player). Even some racing games like Race Driver Grid have no local multiplayer.

The Wii is a bit of an anomaly as its meant to be the party console, yet the core games seem to lack the local multiplayer. Its probably my biggest gripe this gen.

Scoobes: That's true, but even the Wii versions of Call of Duty games don't have it while the 'HD' versions do.

I don't know too much about CoD on the consoles (PC gamer first) so I can't really say. I'd guess its probably down to the HD versions not pushing the HD consoles too hard whilst on the Wii its pushing the hardware more. Of course its entirely possible they spent less resources on the Wii version. Shame really.

The higher the graphics the less trivial it becomes to do local multiplayer. Hell devs probably love the fact that online MP is much bigger issue now than local MP. Though honestly why people would want to play split screen instead of online is beyond me, I hate how small the screen gets. They should just make sure all these games have a friends only option for online so you can 'almost' do local MP but still need two screens and two consoles.

Another question about local multiplayer these days, where are the bots?!

Even Metroid Prime: Hunters has decent bots, and that's on DS! Yet FPS's these days don't bother with them. All the good old FPS's that were heavily played in local multiplayer (including LAN) had bots, they're necessary for when there's just a couple of you. 1 v 1 gets old pretty quick.

A lot of us prefer to play in the same room as our friends. Some of my best gaming memories are 8-man deathmatch in the original Halo.

dharh: The size of the screen is less of an issue nowadays with the massive HDTVs being sold for fairly cheap. The fact is, its a lot more fun for me to have a few mates round playing local split screen with pizza and beer, then just going online or having to go through the hassle of setting up a second screen with a second console.