With live services titles dominating the monthly active user charts on consoles, it is no surprise that publishers have progressively shifted their pipelines away from big-budget single player titles. While publishers won’t stop producing single player titles - Ampere’s consumer data shows that half of all self-identified gamers across 22 countries prefer single player games – they will continue to take necessary steps to minimise risks and extend a title’s lifespan going forward. To do so, they must first understand the key challenges faced by single player titles operating in a live service landscape, including competing across longevity, user acquisition, and monetisation.

In the last few years, the console market has made a major shift to live service games

The live service business model has progressively evolved on console to keep users engaged over longer periods of time and to align to in-game monetisation, approaches already established in other parts of the games sector. The model has become synonymous with multiplayer titles like Fortnite (Epic Games) and FIFA (EA) that use recurring battle passes, major content updates, player packs and premium cosmetics to keep users playing and spending.

Its success is undeniable, with the top 13 games by monthly active users (MAUs) in November 2023 across PlayStation and Xbox being multiplayer and using a live service model. Considering the success, major publishers have pledged resources to increase their output of live service titles. For example, Sony, known for its dedication to developing single player experiences, stated that by its fiscal year 2025 live service content will account for 60% of internal investment in its games business, up from 12% in FY19.

However, while live service games dominate engagement, they require specific expertise, are complex to develop, require big budgets both pre- and post-launch, and the space is highly competitive.

Single player titles typically have a window of just 2-4 weeks to make a major impact

Single player titles experience a heavily front-loaded sales cycle and have a window of 2-4 weeks to make a major impact but can be successful if they are a highly anticipated ‘event’ launch or enjoy strong organic marketing through word of mouth. With less ongoing operating and post-launch research and development costs compared to live service games, single player titles do not need to sustain active users for the long-term, but they must find a commercially-relevant audience quickly at launch to generate a return on investment.

Highly anticipated single-player game, Warner Bros.’ Hogwarts Legacy, debuted at 8^th place ranked by MAUs across PlayStation and Xbox when it launched in February 2023, overtaking FIFA 22 (EA) and Overwatch 2 (Microsoft), but was unable to impact the very biggest games by users. 64% of Hogwarts Legacy’s total lifetime users by the end of July 2023 were acquired in the title’s launch month.

Publishers are using different strategies to mitigate the commercial risk of single player games. This includes driving up average sales prices with the inclusion of premium or ultimate editions of games, charging for early access to games, adding DLC post-launch and using multi-game subscription services to promote older games, and generate incremental revenue streams.

Read the full report here: Are big budget single player games still commercially viable?