Priorities of effort shifted as well: over-worked and under tight deadlines, game developers were (and are) forced to choose between making a co-op multiplayer campaign work at the potential expense of graphics, or ditching split-screen modes in order to focus on keeping their graphics up to date. Why did the tide turn against split-screen gaming? The first reason, arguably, is the increasing complexity of video game graphics and engines. As the processing power of consoles like Xbox and Playstation expanded, developers could make games with more realistic environments and character models, which caused split-screen to put more strain on the console as the game tried to render a detailed world from multiple perspectives at once. The Fall of Split-Screen Co-op Multiplayer
These technical limitations and hijinks gave (and still give) split-screen co-op multiplayer a unique sort of charm, in which players could laugh at themselves and each other. The actual 'split-screen' portion of split-screen gaming wasn't perfect gamers with small TVs (not uncommon in the pre-flatscreen era) had to squint to make out their character's viewpoint on the screen, and sometimes people would lose track of which screen was whose. Related: Xbox Game Studios and Obsidian Announce Grounded, A New Co-op Survival Game Sitting on the couch or floor together, friends and family could experience a single-player campaign's story side-by-side, adopting specialized roles to support each other in combat and pulling the occasional prank to spice things up. At one point, split-screen gaming was de rigueur for console games that wanted multiple players to experience their virtual worlds. What factors caused split-screen co-op gaming to lose luster with developers, and what advances in gaming tech and culture might bring couch campaigns back in style? These days, however, split-screen co-op multiplayer campaigns have nearly vanished from Triple-A games ( Borderlands, Gears of War and Star Wars: Battlefront being some of the few exceptions). Anyone who grew up in the 1990s or early 2000s with a game console probably has fond memories of playing a game with their friends through split-screen, cooperating and competing to defeat enemies, solve puzzles and occasionally cheat by looking at each other's screens.
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