Single Player Games More Popular Than Ever, Claims Sony's Research
Activities in PS5 are one of the biggest surprises of the console's system. It is a direct response to the ever-increasing popularity of single player games and a solution to their most common problems.
- Sony conducted research to see how players use the PS4. The results indicate that single player games are becoming increasingly popular.
- Problems encountered by modern gamer were also outlined. The answer is the Activity function in PS5's system.
- The Japanese company sees a great potential in it.
Single player games are very popular among Sony console users. Documents acquired by the editorial staff of Vice with the help of their informant indicate that people playing on PS4 largely prefer single player games. These conclusions were drawn after many surveys, internal research and analysis of console usage data.
When Sony devised its plan for the PS5, a number of studies were undertaken to learn PlayStation 4 user behaviour, and the conclusions were later shared with the developers who were pitched the idea of Activities, implemented on the PS5 system as a presentation. This began with a presentation of the sales results, with multiplayer games like GTA 5 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 dominating, but on the next page, however, the findings of the research were presented, suggesting that single player games are enjoying great popularity and fare better in general.
It also outlines the most common problems of the modern single player game fan:
- It's not clear how much time it will take them to complete something in the game. They do not turn on the console if they do not have at least 2 hours of free time;
- It takes too much time to look through the video guides when the user gets stuck somewhere;
- They are worried about spoilers on social media;
- They forgot what they were doing in the game after a long break and are afraid to go back to it.
The conclusions of the surveys and questionnaires carried out on 3000 volunteers are summarized as follows:
"In an ideal world, every player has the time to spend hours per day, every day, playing games. In reality, most people have jobs. Or kids. Or school. Or all of the above. Often, free time comes wedged between other obligations. An hour before bed. A 30-minute break between homework assignments. A few minutes before your online MP [multiplayer] match."
The solution to the aforementioned problems are Activities, which enable us to switch between in-game tasks in an instant and display how much time they will take. Developers are free to implement this solution, although Sony has suggested that they should combine these options with the game's genre wisely. With Demon's Souls we can quickly switch between worlds, Spider-Man: Miles Morales enables us to select a task and move to wherewe start, while showing us the approximate time to complete it.
As the editor of Vice points out, several months passed between the presentation and the launch of PlayStation 5 and some ideas may have been abandoned or not yet implemented. This can be seen when we look at Activities in the console's launch titles. Fortnite enables us to instantly launch a game solo, in a duo or a larger group without clicking on the game menu. The success of the option depends on the developers' implementation, but you can see that it has great potential and actually fits in with how the use of game consoles has changed.
Personally, I haven't used the Activities extensively yet, but I see a lot of potential in this option, especially in open-world games, where collecting everything often resulted in meaningless ride/run/fly from one end of the map to the other. The super-fast SSD of the PS5 has been most heavily advertised, but it is Activities that can be the most important new feature on PlayStation 5.
