Assassin's Creed IV To Reportedly Feature Connected Single-Player On Next-Gen Consoles

Demon's Souls style invasions, perhaps? Forming of fleets with other players?

That's not really connected single player, just a different form of multiplayer. It's a really strange way to word what I *think* he's hinting at, but I think it'll be somewhat similar to Dragon's Dogma, for lack of a better example. Or maybe there will be events where your performance/actions/decisions can affect how other players view it during their game.

By forming fleets, I should clarify I meant more like everyone plays in their own games and reaps the benefits of other people's successes as well as their own, but I get what you're saying.

Okay, yeah. That's more along the lines of what I was thinking.

Hmm. Perhaps it'll be a connected economy? Supply and Demand determined by the players actions - are you raiding a certain shipping lane to a certain town? That'll drive prices there up. Are you dropping a lot of supplies and trade goods at one port? That'll drive prices down.
It could even extend to multiplayer-ish aspects. A good example would, as above, be Dragon's Dogma. If I remember right, there's a boss with way more HP than you could ever hope to get down - but it was 'online', so that any damage you did was taken off the bosses HP for everyone, even though you fought it alone. So you could have fleet fights like that - you're fighting a small part of a very large fleet, and each victory by players counts towards beating it.


Or, you know, it could be "I got X weapon, look at my e-peen grow AC4 community! LOOK AT IT."

the more I see/hear about this game - the more strengthened my resolve to buy it.

I know nothing of AC games, but just reading this made me think of zombiu's singleplayer.

Online pirates to stop the pirates.

I've yet to play any games that really benefit from being connected. I'll be happy to see one that actually does it.