Indeed it is: Games like Halo heavily de-emphasize it, and games like Titanfall and Overwatch and such don't even have it anymore: Once upon a time, if an MP-only game didn't have Local Multiplayer on console, it would have been laughed out of the room.
One possible benefit of the hybrid handheld/docked model is that each player maintains their own system and screen, independent of whether or not they have control of the television or are even in the same room as their opponent.
I don't know how much Nintendo is going to implement with regards to their online services, but if they do this right, they would have the killer family gaming machine ecosystem.
They could:
* Implement sensible parental controls. Each user potentially having their own handheld system would make this significantly easier and more robust.
* Implement a friendly family content sharing model. I'm not necessarily begging for free family sharing a-la-Steam, but a discounted license per additional family user would be a smart move, compared to their current 3DS strategy.
* Implement something along the lines of PS4's amazing SharePlay feature, where you can invite a friend to watch you play, voice chat, and even hand the controller virtually over to them so they can help you through tricky sections. Here again, the hybrid model would make it so cool to cheer on my kid from a hotel room across the country on a business trip.
I don't know if the NS will live up to its teaser video, but everything I've seen makes me excited to imagine possibilities, rather than the raw polygon-pushing and logic-crunching. This in stark contrast to the comparatively gimmicky Wii and Wii U.
