Rocksteady Studio's Dax Ginn has said that creating a multiplayer component for Batman: Arkham City would have "(split) the development effort", and "ended up with (the studio) making two pretty average games".
"It's the sort of thing that you think could be cool," said Ginn talking to us last week about multiplayer in a Batman game, "but when you start to play out what that would mean from a development perspective, splitting the development effort to make a single-player campaign and a multiplayer mode would have ended up with us making two pretty average games.
"Our focus is on delivering an off the scale, awesome Batman experience, and that experience is fundamentally a single-player experience. We did consider it but when we thought it through from a production perspective, we thought it would compromise the end result.
"It's quite on trend at the moment to have multiplayer, but if it doesn't fit it can feel a little bolted on. To create something that would have felt crowbarred in and that would have ultimately compromised the thing that we're passionate about, all those signs said to us this is not something we should do."
Rumours about a multiplayer mode being included in the upcoming Batman: Arkham City started last year when PSM3 suggested Rocksteady were working on a multiplayer component.
However, the developer debunked the rumours last month, telling IGN that it hopes "gamers will agree when they get to play the finished game, that we have made the right decision".
Batman: Arkham City launches on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC in October. We'll have our full interview with Dax on the site tomorrow.
Batman Arkham City coverage available in 360Zine Issue 52 - click here to download it for free!
