Because there's a semantic difference between "SimCity" and "SimCity Online." SimCity's been a single-player offline experience since its inception. It's reaso

Because there's a semantic difference between "SimCity" and "SimCity Online." SimCity's been a single-player offline experience since its inception. It's reasonable to believe in a vacuum that a newly-released "SimCity" game will be the same. Lots of people are in such a vacuum -- a LOT of people hear "A new SimCity game is coming out / has come out" in their periphery and, having enjoyed its past iterations, rush to buy the new copy. Their surprise in finding that it's an entirely online experience is reasonable here. Calling it "SimCity Online" could have dampened this effect, causing some -- if not a lot -- of people to stop and think "Wait, what makes it Online? Oh, it's more like an MMO."