Remember the days when the new hot game would be released and you and you buddies would crowd around a TV, pass out controllers and play for hours? You were building real relationships while destroying digital baddies. Those were the days. Well it’s not like that anymore. More and more games are shipping “1 player local” and “2 – X players online”.

While playing online with friends or random players is fun and has its place in gaming. My problem is that players can no longer play games in the same room as their friends. Unless of course you are one of those people with two consoles, two TVs and two copies of every game.

Sure there may be a couple of good reasons for this. One would be technical requirements. It’s possible that games such as Battlefield 3 are just too resource demanding to be able to split it into 2, 3 or 4 different screens. Each one having to render the world, player and bad guys. Or it could be a waste of time for the developers to concentrate on local multiplayer when online multiplayer is so prevalent. Of course we have to bring up the money reason. 4 players on one purchased game on one console are 3 people who are possibly not buying the game. We all know game companies are trying to squeeze every last penny out of their fan bases. In game micro purchases, one time use license codes for onnine play.

The future of local multiplayer does have one bright spot. It currently has a high cost of entry and little support among games. However it is the best implementation of local multiplayer to date. Full screen two player multiplayer on the same console, game and TV. It involves using the two feeds on a 3D TV to display Each players screen at the same time. Normally when you watch 3D TV it displays two separate images at the same time. One of the images is filmed from a slightly different angle amd when each eue only sees one of the two images it makes it look “3D”. Basically one player would have two “right” eyes in their glasses which would only allow the player to see one of the two feeds. The other player would need the two “Left” eyes.

Hopefully we haven’t lost all of our friends before this 3D TV multiplayer becomes more readily available.