Xbox boss Shannon Loftis, who heads up Xbox Publishing for first-party games, believes single-player-only games aren’t dead, but they do have questions to face around their economic viability, noting that higher-quality experiences come with a price tag. Gamers want higher fidelity and higher resolution graphics, and when a multi-hour story is involved, that results in big production budgets.



The suggestion is that some publishers might be understandably spooked putting so much money into a project when their return is not as much a sure-thing as it could be for a product with more potential revenue streams beyond the initial game sale. Loftis said Microsoft’s Netflix-style Xbox Game Pass service for Xbox One, which costs $10/month for access to a library of more than 100 games, is one method by which Microsoft can help fund single-player-only games.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Xbox Boss: Single-Player Games Aren’t Dead, but the Economics Are “Complicated”