Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
No offense to BoB but I think this idea lost its traction a few years ago, it was a fad like episodic gaming, the "superiority" of non-linear design, or digital-only distribution. Since then we've certainly seen a lot of titles add multiplayer, with varying success, but we've still gotten a lot of single player masterpieces like LA Noire and Skyrim. I'd question how much the sandboxyness really counts because tracking has shown how very little the majority of players explore those world, pursue sidequests, or even just make it halfway through the game.
I don't know why you would think I would take offence to someone disagreeing with me. xD That's why I made this thread - for discussion and debate.

I disagree with you, though, regarding how much sandyboxness counts. Skyrim did well not because of it's epic storyline but because of the amount of things you could do in the game, and that you could explore such a massive game world, and because you could do things the way you want. These are exactly the reasons Skyrim got such high reviews. As for LA Noire, I don't think it was that big a deal, that game. The reviews I read had a lot of criticism for it. The game itself sold less copies than Final Fantasy XIII and the ratings weren't that much better, either.

Regardless, the games that have sold best have always had multiplayer or sandbox aspects. They have that ability to be talked about and replayed for a long time, and that means word of mouth hangs around for longer and the sales subsequently go higher. Meanwhile, single player games are played and then finished and then people move on to the next single player game and forget about the earlier one. It's the need to be able to play a game for more than a week that brings about an increase in sales purely on persistent word of mouth advertising.