Well, they have lost a customer in me on many more fields than they probably realise.
You see I am more of a PC gamer anyway and so I buy all my singleplayer and online multiplayer experiences for that platform.
The only reason I bothered with consoles was for the local coop because that was one of the only things consoles did better than pc.
I can say with 100% confidence that certain companies made money (my money) exclusively by having splitscreen included in their games. The best examples would be that of Call of Duty Blackops and the Halo games.
Blackops sold me all of its DLC that I would have otherwise never bought because it had local coop against zombies and complete access to all the online multiplayer from local splitscreen.
While Halo made me buy an entirely new console for just a handful of games. (I had a PS3 before and purchased an Xbox 360 just for Halo) I did indeed play the singleplayer campaign of each, as I do with every game I buy, but most of the hours I put into it were done in splitscreen. In fact, the hours spent on halo reach alone nearly justified the purchase of the entire console. I even bought Halo CE anniversary exclusively for the splitscreen campaign coop (because I already had Halo CE for pc)
There are many other examples of console games I bought just for the splitscreen and even of franchises I followed because of it but those two are the most significant.
So with that said, I fear the trend of dropping splitscreen modes for console games (a trend that has been going on for a while already I feel) is going to kill my consumption of said games and the platforms on which they run. I was going to wait with buying a next-gen console until the prices dropped a bit and their libraries expanded anyway but with less and less local splitscreen available, I find myself hard pressed o justify the cost.
You see I am more of a PC gamer anyway and so I buy all my singleplayer and online multiplayer experiences for that platform.
The only reason I bothered with consoles was for the local coop because that was one of the only things consoles did better than pc.
I can say with 100% confidence that certain companies made money (my money) exclusively by having splitscreen included in their games. The best examples would be that of Call of Duty Blackops and the Halo games.
Blackops sold me all of its DLC that I would have otherwise never bought because it had local coop against zombies and complete access to all the online multiplayer from local splitscreen.
While Halo made me buy an entirely new console for just a handful of games. (I had a PS3 before and purchased an Xbox 360 just for Halo) I did indeed play the singleplayer campaign of each, as I do with every game I buy, but most of the hours I put into it were done in splitscreen. In fact, the hours spent on halo reach alone nearly justified the purchase of the entire console. I even bought Halo CE anniversary exclusively for the splitscreen campaign coop (because I already had Halo CE for pc)
There are many other examples of console games I bought just for the splitscreen and even of franchises I followed because of it but those two are the most significant.
So with that said, I fear the trend of dropping splitscreen modes for console games (a trend that has been going on for a while already I feel) is going to kill my consumption of said games and the platforms on which they run. I was going to wait with buying a next-gen console until the prices dropped a bit and their libraries expanded anyway but with less and less local splitscreen available, I find myself hard pressed o justify the cost.
