: I don't see where we disagree. The game has to have legs, and that could mean
: that it's cutting edge and full of new features to keep it interesting.
: The multiplayer is one thing that keeps people coming back for more but
: that's not the only thing.

Multiplayer keeps people moving to the latest and greatest. It's necessarily about going where the people are. A game with multiplayer a decade later will be effectively DOA - only its single player will keep it imbued with value. Multiplayer is fleeting surface popularity to appease the niche, but highly active and vocal, drooling online gaming community. It gets a game attention in the short term. Long term value is not in multiplayer.

As long as devs want to "top the charts" (which are inherently temporal), they'll continue to (understandable) put weight on online multiplayer. A game without it certainly won't get the same sort of "numbers" and activity in the months after release; its value and quality will be tested on the longer term. But they want sales. So online multiplayer gets significant priority. Not in itself a Bad Thing, but it sucks for the portions of the community that value campaign and story over online gaming.