Off Topic: The Decline of Couch Co-Op

So, I've noticed a kind of strange trend recently among video games--ever since the rise of the current generation of systems, actually.  There are a number of games which provide some co-operative play option (which I'm happy about, since I adore co-op play)...however, a great many of them either limit or completely eliminate couch co-op.

Now, in some cases I can understand the limitation...in some cases, you really want to let people go anywhere, and maybe a single system might not have the kind of power necessary to handle the kind of variable conditions you want to let the players get into as a group--completely different enemy sets, environmental obstacles, etc.  You feel like allowing couch co-op would require you to tether the players together and you don't want to do that (I'd argue that you should let us make the choice of whether we want to be tethered or not, but let's leave that for now).  Or, there's just so much information a player has to handle that you don't feel the game would even be playable in split-screen.  So...I can see some cases where allowing couch co-op might be bad, or where you can't allow four-player couch co-op but you could allow two.

That said, it starts getting a little ridiculous when we're talking about games like The Lord of the Rings: War in the North, which is the latest in a long line of action-RPG dungeon crawler games...most of which have been done with four-player couch co-op.  The Lord of the Rings: War in the North is going to allow two-player couch co-op...and three player online.

(That's another thing...what is with the number of games limiting co-op to three players recently?  The latest Earth Defense Force did it too--admittedly, the previous game in that series only had two-player co-op, so three is an improvement, but still.  Do game makers think gamers have universally decided to boot one of their friends out of their life or something? O_O  Attention, game makers: I have three friends I commonly play with.  That makes four people total.  Please stop making games that force me to leave one of them out.)

Back on topic for the off-topic post here...I understand with some games, but what is it about this particular dungeon crawler that makes it so different from earlier dungeon crawlers that it is suddenly impossible to let at least three players play together locally?  D&D Heroes and Champions of Norrath allowed four local players, and those were on the Xbox and PS2, two less-powerful systems than the ones we have today.  Why, now that we have more powerful game systems, do we need more systems to get to the same or less players than we could get to with one system before?  Oh, by the way...developer of Champions of Norrath?  Snowblind Studios.  Developer of The Lord of the Rings: War in the North?  Snowblind Studios.

As another, possibly even more direct comparison...Phantasy Star Online for the Gamecube allowed single-console cooperative multiplayer...up to four players on a single system.  To be fair, you couldn't play sidequests together for some unknowable reason, but you could play four players split-screen on a single system, and it worked pretty well, especially considering all the information you needed to read for PSO.  Phantasy Star Universe for the Xbox 360 only allows a single player per console, and multiplayer is online-only and requires a subscription.  Again...why, now that I have a more advanced console, have my multiplayer options decreased?

I understand the value of online gaming, of course, and I play that way too...but I do still get together with my group of friends frequently, and it is preferable to not have to set up additional TVs or distribute ourselves between different houses in order to play!