The Cities XL Website announces plans to end the online aspect of Monte Cristo's urban-planning game, which offered the ability to connect your virtual cities with those of other players, saying the service will end on March 8, 2010 at which time a patch will be released to refocus the game on solo play (thanks Massively). This note explains the simple reason: "Three months after the launch we have to admit that the subscription rate is lower than what we expected and therefore the Planet Offer is no longer sustainable. Not enough players decided to subscribe." They also reveal plans for Cities XL 2011, which sounds like it will feature the return of online play in spite of its apparent failure in the current game, as Cities XL shipped in October, and the online mode will only have lasted five months as of March 8. Word is: "Cities XL will be refocused as a solo game. The current online game will be supported until it ends; but until Cities XL 2011 is released no new content or patches will be published either for the current online game or solo game."

The Cities XL End of Planet offer page details how this will work, saying certain online components such as avatars will be going away, others like the bus will be added into solo mode, while other elements will be added to the sequel and content packs: "The Blueprints gameplay will be redesigned and retrofitted to be part of Cities XL 2011. Actual megastructures will be spread through multiple paid content packs." For current subscribers they say Profile pages and city journals will also be closed on March 8, and they will not offer on automated option to convert online cities to solo mode, but there's an unsupported "manual and risky process to import Planet Offer cities into your Solo mode," which will be revealed in the coming weeks, and: "As a Planet Offer subscriber, once Cities XL 2011 will be released you will be automatically granted with all the content present in the European Pack which will include new maps, Megastructures and the Old England building pack."