Epic boss Tim Sweeney believes we're in the midst of a “generational shift” in the video game industry – one that will see games like Fortnite plant their flag on a pile of (mostly single-player) blockbuster corpses. But he is simply repeating a misconception that has been widespread for years and for which there is hardly any evidence. The metaverse is not the future and single player games will never stop coming.

“One of the manifestations (of this change) we're seeing right now is that a lot of games are being released with big budgets and not selling nearly as well as expected,” Sweeney said. “While other games are doing incredibly well. What we’re seeing is a real trend where players are gravitating towards the really big games where they can play with more of their friends.”

To be fair to Sweeney, the picture he paints of the current state of the industry is not entirely inaccurate. We've seen a number of high-profile flops and disappointments in the last year, most recently the actually quite good Star Wars Outlaws. And there's no denying that Fortnite is a gigantic powerhouse that, along with games like Roblox, demonstrates the popularity of not only multiplayer games, but social platforms as well.