Split Screen Gaming

Does anyone remember the good ol' days where one could plug in 4 controllers, pick any multiplayer game off the shelf and just have fun with some buddies for an afternoon? Does anyone miss those days? As the current consoles get more and more entrenched in this online culture it seems that these sort of moments are becoming a rarity. Many games that have multiplayer modes for online practice have opted to completely remove the split screen versions of these modes, which makes very little sense in my mind that you would not give the player the option to play these modes offline with his or her friends.
 
Let me tell you about one instance where this came up recently for me. A few weeks ago my buddy, my girlfriend and I were sitting around just hanging out when we decided we wanted to play a game. The only requirement was that it had to support at least 3 player co-op on one XBox, because my girlfriend doesn't like to play games competitively (aka she isn't very good). So we go through my collection of 60+ 360 games and find not a single game that supports this need. Even games like Halo 3, which supports 4 players on an Xbox in multiplayer, and supports 4 player co-op online, would not allow more than 2 people per Xbox. Others games that come to mind where there have been arbitrary limits on player capacity per Xbox are the last few Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Borderlands and ODST. 
 
So why do companies choose to not include split screen versions of their otherwise available online modes? For a game like Borderlands I could see that more than 2 screens on the same TV might get difficult to handle, but if you have a big enough TV why take that choice away from the player? Perhaps there is a technical reason for this limitation that I don't know about? But seems to me that a game able to support 4 people on the same screen in competitive multiplayer should be able to do the same for co-op.
 
So what does the GiantBomb community think? Does anyone miss the split screen gaming afternoons? Or do you think online multiplayer makes split screen gaming obsolete?

Does anyone remember the good ol' days where one could plug in 4 controllers, pick any multiplayer game off the shelf and just have fun with some buddies for an afternoon? Does anyone miss those days? As the current consoles get more and more entrenched in this online culture it seems that these sort of moments are becoming a rarity. Many games that have multiplayer modes for online practice have opted to completely remove the split screen versions of these modes, which makes very little sense in my mind that you would not give the player the option to play these modes offline with his or her friends.
 
Let me tell you about one instance where this came up recently for me. A few weeks ago my buddy, my girlfriend and I were sitting around just hanging out when we decided we wanted to play a game. The only requirement was that it had to support at least 3 player co-op on one XBox, because my girlfriend doesn't like to play games competitively (aka she isn't very good). So we go through my collection of 60+ 360 games and find not a single game that supports this need. Even games like Halo 3, which supports 4 players on an Xbox in multiplayer, and supports 4 player co-op online, would not allow more than 2 people per Xbox. Others games that come to mind where there have been arbitrary limits on player capacity per Xbox are the last few Modern Warfare 2, Call of Duty: World at War, Borderlands and ODST. 
 
So why do companies choose to not include split screen versions of their otherwise available online modes? For a game like Borderlands I could see that more than 2 screens on the same TV might get difficult to handle, but if you have a big enough TV why take that choice away from the player? Perhaps there is a technical reason for this limitation that I don't know about? But seems to me that a game able to support 4 people on the same screen in competitive multiplayer should be able to do the same for co-op.
 
So what does the GiantBomb community think? Does anyone miss the split screen gaming afternoons? Or do you think online multiplayer makes split screen gaming obsolete?

I remember split screen gaming fondly, but I was in elementary/middle school and playing games with friends was (and is) awesome. Now however, being forced to one half )or worse one-quarter of the screen) is a very unattractive thought. As for why don't companies do that anymore, there are a multitude of reasons, however the largest one is implementing a split screen feature costs time, which in turn costs money, and not a lot of copies of games these days are sold based upon whether or not they have split screen functionality.

I still play splitscreen fairly often these days. Borderlands was my latest splitscreen endeavour. 

I keep looking for splitscreen games for the PC. L4D had a method of making it splitscreen, and playing it with my friends is always a blast

I have a feeling it will eventually disappear from most games... which is really disappointing.

I was stoked for Bulletstorm, then I saw the developer or whatever say that there was no way they were adding co-op. I don't understand why games rarely do co-op anymore. Resistance (which is a game I didn't like, actually) did co-op in a great way. The second character was never explained, never alluded to and never mentioned. But that didn't matter. If MW had co-op then they don't need to explain why Pvt. Medicine Cabinet is hanging out with you all the time. Just do it.

It has an effect on the quality of the graphics so making a game and then making it split screen takes a lot of work but I agree I love split screen.  Nothing better then sitting in a room with a buddy or 3 and playing some games.