Star Wars Battlefront Won't Have Single-Player Campaign Mode Because "Nobody Plays Those"

Star Wars Battlefront, the upcoming action shooter from Electronic Arts, was never designed to have a single-player element -- the game will be multiplayer and online only. But it’s not because such a thing would be impossible or even difficult to do. According to EA chief operating officer Peter Moore, it’s because “very few people actually play the single-player on these kinds of games. That's what the data points to.”

By “these kinds of games,” Moore is referring to not only first- and third-person competitive shooters (Star Wars Battlefront will let you switch between perspectives) like Call of Duty and EA’s own Battlefield Hardline, but the previous two Battlefront titles (which had single player campaigns, albeit brief ones that weren’t much fun). So many players these days skim through the single-player campaigns, assuming they give them any attention at all, Moore argues.

Why not include a single-player campaign anyway? “You make a decision, years out, and you plan for what the world looks like when a game ships in two or three years,” Moore said in an interview with Gamespot. This is the choice EA made when the first decided to have the game created, so Star Wars Battlefront was always meant to be a multiplayer title.

Whether or not it’s true that consumers don’t care about single-player and whether or not it matters remains to be seen, as Star Wars Battlefront doesn’t release until November 17th. But barring a highly unlikely major post-release patch, the new Star Wars game will be multiplayer only.