Spider-Man 2
Insomniac
I always appreciated the candor of Shawn Layden, the ex-head of PlayStation who left his role as CEO of SIE in 2019. And now that he’s out of the company, he has been even more candid about his opinions on all things, including his former company.
Layden gave an interesting interview to GamesBeat that touches on a frequent topic lately, the ballooning cost of AAA games and how it’s becoming unsustainable, which includes being a problem for PlayStation.
Now that games cost way, way more than they used to, the economics of scale for distribution no longer make sense with the limited PS4/5 install base. They often cannot adequately recover those costs or make significant profit no matter how many are sold within the PlayStation ecosystem, and that problem is only increasing in time. Here’s Layden:
“If you’re spending $250 million, you want to be able to sell it to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more. The global installed base for consoles–if you go back to the PS1 and everything else stacked up there, wherever in time you look at it, the cumulative consoles out there never gets over 250 million. It just doesn’t. The dollars have gone up over time. But I look at that and see that we’re just taking more money from the same people.”
Layden cites PlayStation doing a good job with Helldivers 2, releasing that game on PlayStation and PC at the same time, which has dramatically increased its fortunes. But while PlayStation has committed to doing that with other f2p multiplayer games, they still seem to want to institute lengthy delays for PC releases of their big cinematic games. They are more open to adapting them period, but it’s still a period of lag. And there does not seem to be any chance at all of them putting their big games on Xbox, something Xbox itself is now starting to dabble with.
As much as I like Layden, I have to take his opinions with a bit of a grain of salt, given what he’s currently doing. Layden is now an advisor to Readygg, a blockchain/NFT endeavor. Here’s how it’s described on the website:
“READYgg’s layer 3 platform offers plug-and-play infrastructures built on layer 0 for seamless interoperability across blockchain networks to integrate web3 functionality and NFT support into any game.”
Blockchain game Gods Unchained
Immutable
We certainly have not seen many mainstream games with a desire to integrate “web3 functionality and NFT support,” as the idea has failed colossally in the core gaming scene, and previous, frequently-cited “success” examples like Axie Infinity all but collapsed. More games are being made but it’s still a small scene. Here’s Layden on the idea, addressing crypto game skepticism:
“That’s all blown through, I think. A lot of the NFT craze is gone now. Crypto is where it is. But we’re looking at the enabling technology. There were the get rich quick schemes three to five years ago. But do these underlying technologies have a greater purpose? Are they solving problems? I look at READYgg and say, “Can you solve the problem of used digital games? Can we create a marketplace where everyone who added to the value of that game, largely the developer and publisher, can reap rewards through the reselling of that IP?”
Yeah, not really optimistic about that, even if I do appreciate his larger points about PlayStation and the challenges they face now. I don’t think smaller companies making a bunch of blockchain games with altered revenue models are the solution to larger budget and distribution issues, even if it holds as a niche market. But PlayStation, and other AAA studios, are going to need to come up with new strategies at some point here.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Laura Adams is a tech enthusiast residing in the UK. Her articles cover the latest technological innovations, from AI to consumer gadgets, providing readers with a glimpse into the future of technology.
