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Me and my friend have really the only thing in common in interest are video games. We finshed army of 2 the 40th day today. Then we decided to play lost planet 2 co-op demo. Load it up discover that it is only playable co-op over a internet connection. my firend has a wii so we cant play over x-box live. Why is it companies are doing this? why alienate a group like us. Me and my friend really only have video games in common and I fear we may be losing that.
we can enjoy great games like borderlands or crackdown. Is it really that hard too make split screen? it has been done before.
Thoughts?

I hate that you can't play most 360 4 player split screen any more. Not sure if it's the hardware that can't cope, or if the game designers couldn't make it work.

For a lot of games I'd happily take a performance hit to get four friends going at once.

Yep this gets me too. I don't know who at sony and microsoft decided that video games should be so unsocial. In some cases even racing games don't offer splitscreen.

When I was younger I had an n64, that used to be something to do if you had friends round. The 360 and ps3 have lost that quality all together. Why don't they just go ahead and make it so you can only connect one pad next time round.

If I have people over for a quick game it's either fifa10, Zombies!!1 or Rock Band. All good choices and loads of fun, but it would be nice to have some more variety considering I have a decent games library.

Split-screen games I've played on the Xbox are Halo 3, Gears of War, and CoD. All of which are hillarious whilst drunk or stoned. I do agree however that it's a feature that's left out of too many games. Perhaps developers don't see it as worth devoting time to, what with the prevalence of online play these days.

Most likely its just sales. Why let 2-4 people play while only buying 1 game. Ive been playing games for 20 years so I have seen the decline of same system multiplayer since its start. It is really annoying especially since they brag about how powerful the systems are. If they are that powerful get the developers to make more same system multiplayer. If I can drage out my Genesis and do split screen on Toejam & Earl I should be able to do it with any multiplayer game on my 360.

I'd say it would probably be more difficult to get split-screen working on current-gen consoles. With all the fancy graphics and things being squeezed into games, I imagine getting that to run twice, or four times, on the same box is not easy.

Although I know bugger all about game development or the mechanics of split-screen play so this is pretty much all guesswork.

There are a few games which had online that would have been great to play on the same console - Mercs 2 and GTA 4 off the top of my head.

I was really disappointed to find that Aliens vs. Predator didn't have a 2-player co-op or split screen versus mode. So in order to play the game with my brother I'd have to buy my own 360, and we'd both need a Live subscription which he can't really afford being jobless at the moment.

I can see why they might be doing it, personally I'd much rather play online than do split-screen (especially four player split-screen) since the game looks better for one and I like being able to see a lot more, but it costs a hell of a lot more since everyone has to have their own console and an expensive Live subscription, and it's not as sociable. That and sales, like it was said. But really though I wish they'd offer 2 or even 4 player games more often because it is damn fun.

So AvP does not have a system link capacity? And live is not hugely expensive, though obviously it is something extra to pay.

Nope. The menu even says "xbox live" rather than "multiplayer".

Sidstyler wrote:I was really disappointed to find that Aliens vs. Predator didn't have a 2-player co-op or split screen versus mode. So in order to play the game with my brother I'd have to buy my own 360, and we'd both need a Live subscription which he can't really afford being jobless at the moment.

I can see why they might be doing it, personally I'd much rather play online than do split-screen (especially four player split-screen) since the game looks better for one and I like being able to see a lot more, but it costs a hell of a lot more since everyone has to have their own console and an expensive Live subscription, and it's not as sociable. That and sales, like it was said. But really though I wish they'd offer 2 or even 4 player games more often because it is damn fun.

To be fair, AvP isn't the kind of game for two players in either the campaign or multiplayer, except for perhaps Survival mode. The campaigns are about lone warriors up against impossible odds. Halo 3 managed to explain its co-op campaign very well, with each player being a different character that was actually part of the story (although N'tho and Usze were, admittedly, background characters). In AvP, it just wouldn't make sense. If they'd actually gone with the route where players are clones of each other in co-op, I probably wouldn't had bothered renting it as that just seems like poor design to me.

Some games work better in system link, such as Saints Row 2 and Super Magical Flying donkey-cave Cops Who Throw Cars At Mooks a.k.a. Crackdown, while others really benefit from split screen, such as Gears of War 2 and Lego Star Wars.

If a game like Halo3 won't let you play 4 player splitscreen campaign because of 'story' reasons or because they are worried about sales, that makes me angry.

If they couldn't get the machine to cooperate then I can't complain too much. Almost any game is more fun with more people playing. 4 players are better than 2.

Giving the extra players different character models in Halo 3 is a purely aesthetic move, really. 4-player co-op was a feature they wanted in, and decided that different characters was preferable (and made sense from a story perspective) than the Halo 1 + 2 method of just having master chief clones.

Story reasons shouldn't exclude a game from having co-op when it would benefit from having it.

I agree... I bought an xbox 360 recently and the quad game "Pure" that came with it has no split screen mode.

The ONLY time I would play this game would be if a younger cousin/friend came over and wanted to try out the system... but shouldn't be playing shooter games (according to their parents, etc).

So the game has no use to me... and it's gone to ebay...

GTA: SA

Terrible merged camera. Although it was fun to steal a Concord jet and have a buddy on the wing shoot down Helicopters with a shotgun. At least until you had to turn. Then it got bad