Online Play For All?

How do you people feel about online play? Well according to an article on IGN EA Plans Online Play, DLC For All New Titles
I've got to say I'm very scepticle about this news, I have played online and there are games that are specifically designed with online multi-player in mind, for example games like Call of Duty, Left4Dead, Left4Dead2 and Burnout Paradise. The best example out of those titles is Left4Dead, it's a multi-player game with a solo campaign. The reverse can be said of Bioshock where it was an excellent solo play game with an excellent story, graphics and atmosphere the developers decided that it needed a multi-player mode which they released with the PS3 Edition, and have developed that idea for the upcoming sequel.

Looking at the titles EA have released so far you have both the Mass Effect games, Dragon Age:Origins which has recently had a sequel announced, Dante's Inferno and The Saboteur. All of these games are single player and we play them for the story, not to reach a cut scene and have your mates talk all over it, I get annoyed when my girlfriend asks if I wanted a drink while I was trying to find out why a massive alien hadn't just killed my where I stood. Now don't get me wrong I know that the article isn't saying that all games will have a multiplayer storyline, but have some sort of multiplayer mode. 

Another good example of this sort of thing is Assassins Creed 2. Ubisoft have created the Uplay system an in-game system for downloading extras and additional Downloadable content for certain games. You pay for these by unlocking uplay points by doing certain actions in the game. One of these is an arena that you can play against your friends, I don't see the point personally, because you only have a set number of moves that your friend will know as well, it's like playing rock, paper, scissors. There is no skill and this is surely the whole point of multi-player Vs. modes, showing off your skills against other opponents. I could be wrong about this as I've not played it personally.

A lot of this will depend on how well the multi-player is done, with the Bioshock 2 example, 2K have a completely separate development team working on the multi-player platform so it's not supposed to feel like it's been tacked on.