Why is 4 the magic number?

[Z4N5H1N]

The arcade thread on the first page, and the discussion therein about the old X-men side-scroller that we all know and love, got me thinking. A large part of the reason that game was so popular and so fun was that it was a giant cabinet with room for six players. Six!

Fast-forward 19 years, and that classic beat-'em-up has been released on XBLA. The only problem is...you only have four controllers! Why is this? Why do we still have the same number of maximum controllers on today's console as we did on the N64? Why is 4 the magical number of controllers that has been deemed optimal? On today's consoles, it's not even a matter of physical space on the front of the console, as today's controllers don't plug in. Surely we have enough wireless frequencies available to have more than four controllers synced at once. The GameCube wavebirds allowed you to select from sixteen different frequencies...but you could still only have four in use at once.

So what's the deal? Will there be a time when consoles will support enough controllers to play a 1992 coin-op title the way it's meant to be played? Or are we going to be stuck having only three friends forever?

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

because do you really want 12 player split screen?

 

[mandrilltiger]

Back in Split-Screen days splitting the screen more than 4 would make things very complicated and hard to see.

Now they're just in the habit.

 

[lowkey_jotunn]

My guess (just a guess) simple logistics. For instance, any racing game or FPS will need to split screen. Splitting more than 4 ways just gets silly. Any fighting game with more than 4 people at once will just be cluttered and extremely hard to follow. And any take-turns type game (i.e. wii sports) would just get extremely tedious if you had to wait 7 people for your turn to come up again.

I'm sure there are a few exceptions, and code could likely be written (if it hasn't already) to allow current gen consoles to recognize more than 4 controllers. But those are the outliers, the weirdos.

I guess the most pressing question is: What 4 player game do you have that would be significantly better with the addition of a 5th (or more.) You've named one. Any others?

 

[Z4N5H1N]

because do you really want 12 player split screen?

Nope. I'm not complaining about developers not allowing us to have eight players playing split-screen Black Ops at once. I'm aware of the constraints of television real estate.

However, not all - or even most - multiplayer is split-screen. The aforementioned X-men game requires no more screen real estate for six-player mode than it does for one-player mode. Neither does any other platformer, beat-'em-up, shoot-'em-up, etc.

There's plenty of games that would be fantastic with more than four players, but hardware prevents them from being realized. And with today's console configurations, there's no reason for hardware designers not let us sync more than four controllers. It would allow developers more freedom, it would likely result in more controller sales, and it would take nothing more than putting a wireless receiver in the console that supports more than four frequencies.

..and I wouldn't have to have a Gold account just to play six-player X-men like I did when i was 12.

 

[blankedboy]

Yeah, split-screen only really fits 4, at least on older, low-res consoles like the PSX and N64. I suppose you could fit 8 or so on a newer machine at 720+p... that'd kick ass.

 

[Z4N5H1N]

I guess the most pressing question is: What 4 player game do you have that would be significantly better with the addition of a 5th (or more.) You've named one. Any others?

Probably half the titles on XBLA would be a riot with 5+ players. Castle Crashers? Hell yeah! Aegis Wing and other shmups? That would be bonkers.

 

[Fenring]

I guess the most pressing question is: What 4 player game do you have that would be significantly better with the addition of a 5th (or more.) You've named one. Any others?

Probably half the titles on XBLA would be a riot with 5+ players. Castle Crashers? Hell yeah! Aegis Wing and other shmups? That would be bonkers.

At some point it becomes too easy due to the amount of players, and if you keep on adding enemies, you'll have too much stuff going on to easily make out what's happening. Four isn't too high or low.

 

[mjc0961]

Not only does splitting the screen more times make it harder to see, it also taxes the hardware more. If there is two player splitscreen, the game is being rendered twice by the system. 4 player? Rendered 4 times. Most games are so much these days that you are lucky to get 2 player split screen, and that is still going to have some cutbacks made in the graphics department beyond "it's smaller."

I realize all of that is irrelevant for games that just put more players on the same screen, but I thought it was worth mentioning because of all the talk about screen real estate being the only problem. It's not.
I am still baffled that Guerrilla put split-screen co-op into Killzone 3, but no support for online mode. Most devs just go online co-op only because split-screen is too much to get running, but Guerrilla puts forth all that effort to do split-screen and then looks at the much easier online co-op and decides not to add it.

 

[Bucketbutter]

4 is the magic number because it is followed by 2.

But on topic, the multitude of reasons previously stated pretty much cover it.

The trend I dislike is that it seems most games will only support up to two player co-op on a single system, when it doesn't seem too far fetched that you could have up to four. My friends and I will specifically buy/rent games that we can all play together at my house, but it seems like that's usually a pretty select group of games.