The Demise of Split Screen Multiplayer

I was at a friend's place a little while ago, and decided to take the opportunity to play some of his Playstation 3 as I don't have one. He played a little Fat Princess, and then I did, but it got kind of boring playing online while the other person watched. So I asked if he had a second controller so we could play a game together. He took one out and started digging through the menus.

"Oh, I guess this doesn't have any local multiplayer" he said.

"Ugh, crap. Well, do you have a game that does?" I responded.

"Hmmm, Motorstorm does I think."

This excited me as I always thought that game looked good but hadn't ever played anything but the demo at Best Buy. However, he quickly realized that it also didn't have any local multiplayer. Not having much else to try, we went back to taking turns watching each other play Battlefield 1943 and Fat Princess.

Now, I won't defend everything about the Wii, but it seems to me Nintendo got some things right that Microsoft and Sony have forgotten. I don't own a PS3 or 360, so I couldn't tell you how much I would play online, but I can tell you that I've loved having the Wii for when people come over.

When family comes over for holidays, a friend stops by, or my sister-in-law's transatlantic boyfriend is in town, the Wii gets a lot of play. It makes me wonder how much a PS3 or 360 would get played when people were over, had I owned one.

Being a husband and a father sort of limits my gaming time. Personally, I think I would probably choose to spend that time playing single player games, or local multiplayer when guests are involved. Sure, I can't guarantee that, not having owned a system with adequate online support, but I have a pretty strong hunch it'd work out that way.

Are we slowly losing this element of social gaming interaction? In 10 years, will it be completely impossible to sit down with a group of friends for some game time?

Every time we have a family gathering with my wife's side of the family, I inevitably end up back at her cousin's house. Me, a couple of her cousins, their friends, and her Uncle end up playing Halo, Call of Duty or some other shooter for hours.

I'm terrible at First Person Shooters, but I'm still better then her Uncle and one of the cousins just given that I play games a lot. So it's a lot of fun to get together with everyone and play. When I get a PS3 or 360 though, I doubt that I will ever buy any of the new FPS games. With dwindling local multiplayer support, I'd most likely be left with only online, where I would get completely destroyed.

Obviously online has its benefits, and I would never say we should get rid of it, but I just wish that the industry wouldn't keep forgetting about local multiplayer. When my kids are old enough to play games with me, I want to be able to sit down and have trash talking matches with them. Is it going to come to the point that we will have to have 2 systems to play online while we're sitting right next to each other? I would hope not.