Single player gaming alive and well, Sony report finds

A Sony internal report finds single player gaming among its users more popular than online multiplayer. — Bloomberg

Solo gaming is more popular than online multiplayer among PlayStation users, according to Sony’s internal data.

News portal Vice wrote that the video game company found its players were regularly spending more time playing offline than online.

The article was based on Sony’s documents meant for game developers, where the company was contradictorily trying to convince developers that single player games were dying.

This assumption was seemingly based on statistics showing the PlayStation 4’s top selling games, like action adventure game Grand Theft Auto V and first-person shooter Call Of Duty: Black Ops 3, dominating sales due to their multiplayer modes.

The company’s report also stated that players had problems with single player games, including not having enough time to play for several hours in a row, losing track of the story or getting stuck in-game, plus seeing spoilers when discussing the game.

However the news portal noted that in the next slide, Sony also acknowledged that its internal tracking data showed “single player is thriving”.

Sony’s proposed solution, dubbed the Universal Data System, would reportedly help players figure out how they should play a single player game and what in-game quests they would have time to complete in one sitting.

“We can change ‘should I start playing’ to ‘which part should I start playing’,” stated the internal report.

Vice speculated this report explained why games for the PlayStation 5 would have more guided in-game activities for players.