Market floods are a common occurrence. Pocket monsters, open world zombie survival games, looter shooters, modern military shooters, MoBAs, arena fighter, ETC. One game gets success in a genre and every company tries to cash in by making a copy and the player base gets tired and moves on to another genre.

Eventually the players who enjoyed the genre come back and the genre has a game that becomes 'The one that beat the competitors'. It's just the current life cycle for most games and the general audience.

No matter what anyone says though, Single player games will always have a place in gaming. There are too many aspects that often get ignored in a 'always online' game, Story, world building, soundtrack, conversation, special moments a developer that want to have meaning to a player.

Besides, like you said, 'always online' means a player has to constantly keep up in order to play with everybody else. Many players don't wish to spend all the free time they have to commit to that, some just want to turn on a game and play!

I may have gone off on a tangent here but I did enjoy your post. Highly thought provoking stuff! Thank you for sharing your thoughts.