The video game industry is right now in heavy turmoil, as suggested by the former PlayStation CEO, Shawn Layden. Huge companies are opting for arrays of employee layoffs as well as studio closures as cost-cutting measures. Ubisoft even went to delay its highly anticipated Assassin’s Creed Shadows to compensate for the loss caused by Star Wars Outlaws.
The main reason for this distressed situation is the money-mongering mentalities of most of the publishing companies. Games these days are following the same trend of micro-transactions with little emphasis on building something unique, something creative.
Shawn Layden, the former CEO of PlayStation, thinks the video game industry is becoming unbalanced. The era of AA games, those in-between big-budget blockbusters and smaller independent efforts, is virtually dead, according to Layden, a former head of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, and it is not good for the future of gaming.
In a conversation with Raw Fury, co-founder Gordon Van Dyke at Gamescom Asia, Layden spoke about the problem facing the industry today. He said:
Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game is in triple digit millions now. I think naturally, risk tolerance drops. And you’re [looking] at sequels, you’re looking at copycats, because the finance guys who draw the line say, ‘Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time.’ We’re seeing a collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production.
In the past, the primary goal was to make games enjoyable rather than to consider how much money they would produce, Layden noted. Smaller games flourished because game development teams could take more risks because it was less expensive.
Despite spending millions, many games like Concord, Redfall, Skull and Bones, Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, and many more failed miserably. But these games weren’t the parts of the first wave that opened the floodgate of a “generational change.”
Many people think Fallout 76 was the first title that stumbled hard in the gaming market. Although Layden never pointed out this title directly, his statement clearly explains why this title never made it to the top. It was considered to be the first AAA title to fail to gather a substantial player base even after having both potential and an adequate amount of spending.
It’s true that later on players went on to gather around in the battlefield of Fallout 76, but it never did justice to the expectations the developers had around it. This game actually never brought the legacy that the Fallout franchise has been carrying since its entry into the gaming scene. So, its collapse was quite evident.
What’s your opinion on the statement of the former PlayStation CEO? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section.
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