Harrison: Atari Dropping Single-Player, Narrative Driven Games

Phil Harrison, the new President of Infogrames, has announced that Atari will be moving away from publishing single-player, narrative driven games. He revealed this at the press junket for Eden Studios’ upcoming Alone in the Dark.

“Swan song” is probably not the right word, but I think Atari is part of an industry in some transition from pure packaged media to an online business model and social communication and community model. If we are part of that transition, perhaps we are going to take a slightly aggressive, leading-edge role in that transition.
I don’t see that we’re going to be making huge-budget, single-player games in the future. Now, that doesn’t mean that we won’t have ambition to do really incredible games that have high quality, high execution, and high innovation, but they won’t be one-player, narrative-driven, start-middle-end games.

I find this both disappointing and short sighted. As much as I enjoy MMOs and multi-player games, I feel there is still a viable market for single-player games out there. I suppose this means that CD Projekt will have to find another publisher for any sequels to The Witcher.

via Gamasutra