Went to my cousin's place in Omaha last weekend and saw his kids playing a split screen game together, hit me right in the feels | Couch Co-op Crew - Hub Chatter
Went to my cousin's place in Omaha last weekend and saw his kids playing a split screen game together, hit me right in the feels
So I drove up to Omaha last weekend to visit my cousin and his two boys, ages 9 and 12. After dinner they asked if they could play a game and I figured they'd each grab a tablet and go sit in separate rooms like most kids do now. Nope. They fired up a racing game on the Switch and sat shoulder to shoulder on the couch, yelling at each other and laughing every time one of them drove off a cliff. I just sat there kind of stunned because I remember doing the exact same thing with my brother on the N64 back in like 1999, passing one controller back and forth. It hit me that for a while there it felt like couch co-op was dying out, everything went online and everyone got their own screen. But watching those two kids trash talk each other over a blue shell, I think it's making a comeback. Any of you got younger kids or nieces and nephews who actually still want to play together in the same room? What games are they into these days?
Watching your nephews sounds great, but I don't buy that couch co-op ever really went away, at least not for kids who live under the same roof. My neighbor's two girls play Mario Kart and Minecraft together on one TV almost every day, mostly because they're in the same house and sharing a screen is just easier than buying two of everything. What actually faded was split screen for grownups who moved apart, since online play made way more sense once your friends weren't on your couch anymore. The games never left, the setup just changed with who's around to play.