A Disturbing Thought.

I think a lot of devs are hoping to cash in on the MP wave, but I don't think its going to be the death of SP. As long as there is a market there will be a product. I hate MP so I'm not going to start playing it.

I don't see the SP RPG disappearing but as to Bioware producing them... that remains to be seen. Clearly EA is thinking of the bottom line and MEA did not meet expectations so they don't want to put any more investment in it. As to SP under EA, with Anthem being the focus, they are going to see how that goes. Games all around doing micro transactions in MP - this seems to be the model coming for AAA especially under EA.

Hell, with Shadows of War, Warner Bros is trying out the micro transactions idea on SP! They are seeing how this goes and if people bite, well, then that might be the future. It's all about the bottom line.

I think as others have said here, like with Hellblade: Sensua's sacrifice, smaller rpgs that have the feel of AAA might be the future and if that is the case, then I'm a little relieved. I can live with this.

It just bites because I love Bioware's games and would miss it if they abandon the model eventually. I don't see it happening full stop right away, though. I think it all depends on how Anthem performs.

That's what worries me, I really like RPGs, but there's practically no big studios to produce them. And while I like some projects (Pillars of Eternity), they don't have enough budget to make really big games that I can play for years and get really sucked in.

The Technomancer wasn't that bad other than its over all finish. I actually like the combat better than TW3's. For how much was spent I was pleasantly surprised. It felt very much like a Bioware title, just with a smaller budget.

There is one simple solution: do not play EA/BW MP games. That's it. If Anthem will fail, they will have no other choice like only to focus again on SP games. If Anthem will succeed, i will be not surprised if they will focus on MP/MMA games, releasing SP games like DA4 once every 5 years or so.

They're having wet dreams over the COD crowd for years by now. EA has. Riccitiello was pretty vocal about that before the release of ME3, which was the first Bioware game with tacked on MP.

That being the crucial point. Noone can say if there even will be a DA4 or if it turns into an MMO on the way.

I have one attachment. Only one, but it's a crucial one. Their companions and the possibility to romance them. They lost me on that aspect with MEA, but usually the player gives the impression of being a real person to immerse yourself in. That's about the only thing I would miss if Bioware stopped doing what it did in the past.

This forum is anecdotal at best. It all depends on their market research. If they think they can rake in a new MMO audience, the SP players will be left hanging out to dry.

I think you are reading a little too deeply into what BioWare is doing with Andromeda. They are a company likes using metrics to determine what they are doing and I think the problem with Andromeda and its DLC is just not enough people are playing it anymore. If you read the forums here a lot of people indicated they only played the game once and that was enough or that they were waiting for DLC to start a new game. So from what BioWare could see the single player portion of the game was dead and they couldn't recoup the costs of developing DLC for it. Now with multiplayer what makes Microtransaction successful is the "whale system" where a handful of people buying content pays for everyone so instead of needing 100,000 people to buy a single player DLC to cover costs, they might only need a couple thousand spending a lot of money on microtransactions.

If Andromeda was a big success at launch and still abandoned single player DLC like what happened with Rockstar and GTAV then I would think you would be on the right track.

One thing with Anthem is that its allowing BioWare employees to take a break from making the same game over and over again which has been the companies MO since Jade Empire, those games have slight differences but at the core they are all really the same basic ideas just rehashed over and over again. Which might bring new ideas into future games they are developing.

Things like multiplayer are in games because that is what people want, analysts predict that Mass Effect 3 was BioWare's best selling game. Why is that the case when they had the entire blowup over the endings, it is probably that the multiplayer attracted more people to the game. So it is a combination of chasing the money, but also giving people what they show they want in the games as well.

It's pretty simple and can be distilled down to this.

When the 3 wise sages founded Bioware, they operated on the premise: "In order to make games, we need to make money."

EA work on the premise: "In order to make money, we need to make games."

When your motivation for what you're doing shifts from a creative basis to a purely monetary basis, the creativity withers and eventually dies. EA don't put out the likes of FIFA & COD annually to make the best & innovative football or shooter game for their players. They do it because they shift millions and millions of units every year for a minimal amount of effort, and the maximum amount of profit.

I don't believe the pulling of additional SP content for MEA confirms that it either didn't sell well, or they caved to some of the bad PR. It does however make me think a lot of the troubles reported did happen, and this was a simple risk cutting of potential losses if any further investment was to continue.

I do fear though that the focus is gradually shifting to this always online multiplayer BS, and it further drains my faith in the human race folk in their droves lap it all up shelling out their money for it. For me at least, the likes of Destiny, TOR, WoW etc just can't beat the kind of experiences you get in games like the original KOTOR, DAO or Mass Effect 1, but what do I know?