Microsoft and Xbox have made huge strides in recent months to essentially re-brand themselves into the home for gamers to play. Indeed, much of this effort has gone according to plan, as sales of Xbox One are already on track to outpace the Xbox 360. Given the incredible rate at which Microsoft has turned things around, we’re going to take a look at where they might still continue improving: Single Player. If this article had been titled “Player One: Where Xbox Lags Behind,” it would be an unfair title. However, given the propensity for Xbox games to include multiplayer in their console exclusives, then it may just work and that is the debate: “Player One” vs “Single Player”.
Comparing AAA third party offerings between the Xbox One and Playstation 4 isn’t an altogether difficult undertaking. In fact, in our current generation of consoles it is downright rare to see a third party exclusive game be exclusive to a specific console. Bloodborne, Street Fighter V, and Titanfall may spring to your mind, but beyond the obvious AAA third party exclusives, these gams are few and far in between.
On the gaming front, finding content to draw the gamer to a specific console falls quite obviously to first party studios. It is the heavy-hitter for many debates by gamers: which console has the “killer-app” to draw you in. Microsoft essentially slam dunked in their backwards compatibility announcement, which might even reignite old franchises like Alan Wake. In the modern age of consoles, Sony and Microsoft have taken a very different approach to their exclusives. Each strategy has granted a varying degree of results.
Sony for their part has invested, wisely or not, in a number of studios to create a wide range of games to fill out their console portfolio. They are among the most recognizable games of the Sony brand. God of War, Infamous, The Last of Us, and Uncharted all stand out as bright spots of the Playstation mind share.
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Each of these franchises is largely driven by the single player narrative. Oddly and despite added modes of multiplayer, these franchises are typically thought of as single player experiences.
In contrast, the Microsoft portfolio of first party exclusives feel like multiplayer games whether you play campaign, co-op, or competitive multiplayer. Most notable of their franchises are Halo, Gears of War, and the Crackdown series. As the Halo franchise recently celebrated 65 million units sold since Combat Evolved, Microsoft and 343 have gone out of their way to make the single player experience even more multiplayer focused. More player one than single player.
Stories anecdotal and documented are abound of fans system-linking their original Xboxes together so they could play Combat Evolved multiplayer and the same for their PCs online. Competitive multiplayer became the primary pillar of the franchise despite having a hugely recognizable main character in Master Chief and a campaign that reaches into an expanded universe of books, board games, and comics. Competitive multiplayer though is likely the reason fans keep coming back. An easy indicator of this being that nearly all the DLC released are competitive multiplayer maps.
You can trace this DNA back to the infancy of Xbox Live. As the service exploded so too did the idea of co-op and Microsoft hit the jackpot when Epic Games created Gears of War on the Xbox 360, expanding to a wider audience than the Halo faithful. It was the fastest selling game of 2006 and the second most played on Xbox Live in 2007. The Gears of War formula though is by design a campaign that requires you and a partner to move throughout the game together. Another example of being “player one” versus single player.
Knowing that Gears of War was an important exclusive, Microsoft secured the rights to the franchise to keep it from jumping to competitor’s console. You may look to other examples of multiplayer-centric exclusives in Killer Instinct, Crackdown and Sunset Overdrive. Killer Instinct of course is a fighting game, the genre by definition begs for multiplayer while Sunset Overdrive and Crackdown are both steered towards playing with friends.
In many of the above Microsoft first party games, player one is encouraged to join in with a community of others in their gaming experience. Left behind is the player who wants an entirely solo experience. While Halo, Forza, Gears, etc. can be played in isolation, those titles come alive when the player is joined by others. What if though the player does not want to join others? Be it the parent with an erratic gaming schedule, an escapist who simply wants to elude society in their gaming experience, or a gamer who doesn’t have reliable access to the internet or a group on the internet they choose to engage with – does Microsoft lag behind for this demographic of gamers?
We already know the system is an incredible value. You can get more content on Xbox One and for less money than a Playstation 4 if you play your cards right.
On the Sony side of things, gamers have the Infamous franchise, The Order 1886, Bloodborne, Uncharted, and The Last of Us. Even with multiplayer components in these, they are driven by their single player experience. Sony remains mum on what several of their studios are working on, but at E3 they showed us Horizon: Zero Dawn and the remake of Final Fantasy VII which again feel like they are single-player experiences.
When it comes down to it, Microsoft and Sony both have amazing libraries that speak to an impressive range of gamers. Third parties certainly fill the gaps of either company’s available games. However, when it comes to the solo player, it is Sony that has the edge at present. It began during the PS3 life cycle and has carried into the modern generation. Microsoft certainly had plenty of single-player offerings in the 360’s life cycle. As a colleague pointed out to me: Kameo, Shadow Complex, Blue Dragon, and Alan Wake all make for incredible solo games. Is that panache gone in the Xbox One age or are they simply getting less attention?
The question becomes though: does Microsoft need to speak to the single-player? They provide plenty of options for player one. Is that enough? Given the incredible turnaround we’ve seen from Microsoft since Phil Spencer has take over, it may simply be a matter of perception. On the horizon are Quantum Break, Scalebound, and perhaps Recore. Might they fill the proposed void, if there even is one? The AAA space is filled with focused multiplayer games and the Indie space may be home to experience played by a single gamer.
Let us know in the comments or on Twitter and Facebook if you find the catalog lacking in this area or not. First person to make a joke about a player being single wins.
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