The presentation opens by saying "everyone knows single player is dying," with a list of the top-selling PlayStation 4 video games
that seems to crib this sales list, showing games like
Grand Theft Auto V and
Black Ops 3 dominating sales because of their multiplayer modes.
In the next slide, however, Sony explained that, in reality, its internal tracking data shows that "single player is thriving," and PlayStation users are regularly spending more time playing offline than online.
(We cannot show you those charts because they are watermarked in such a way that it would reveal our source, potentially putting their career and relationship with Sony at risk.)
The company then outlined what players say are their problems with single player games:
- "No idea how long I might need, don't play unless I have 2+ free hours"
- "Takes a lot of time to scan through long help videos when stuck"
- "How to engage socially without risk of spoilers"
- "Forgot what I was doing in this game last time, hard to get back in"
The problem, Sony proposed, was that people don't have enough information to determine when and how they should play a single player game. Alongside being able to jump around between different quests, Sony's activity feature would suggest how long it will take to finish a quest, allowing players to find something that fit best with the time they have available.
"We can change 'should I start playing' to 'which part should I start playing?'" reads a slide next to a screen shot from Uncharted. "The options are there. The choices are clear. The game is calling. Pick up that controller. It's time to play."
There is no universal system for implementing activities into PS5 games, which is why you see it used differently across games. In
Demon's Souls, for example, it's warping between worlds. In
Miles Morales, you can jump straight into a story mission or side quest, if you don't feel like swinging across the map. According to Sony's presentation, the ideal activity is one tied to "a unit of gameplay inherent to the game structure (e.g. quest, chapter, mission.)"
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