Ex-PlayStation America Boss Says “Only The Dog Can Hear” New Hardware Upgrades, Argues For Universal Format So Devs “Can Compete On Content”
In the opinion of former Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation America head Shawn Layden, not only has video game hardware hit a plateau in terms of the performance upgrades each successive generation can meaningfully offer their players, but as such the best way forward for overall industry growth is the adoption of a ‘universal software format’ that he believes will both foster more genuine dev creativity and make the medium more accessible thanks to the resulting creation of a larger console manufacturing market.
Layden, who previously served as the CEO and President of Sony Interactive Entertainment America from 2014-2019 before going on to accept his current position as an advisor for the China-based Tencent Games, offered his take on the video game industry’s current trajectory while making an appearance on a recent episode of the Player Driven podcast.
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Reflecting on the success of educational efforts like the Girls Make Games Scholarship Fund in helping spark and nurture the game dev ambitions of newer generations, Layden admitted that while the youth’s desire to make games focusing on “social” and “environmental themes” may not be “commercially viable per se”, the skills they learned in these educational courses “will help them make other games later”.
“That’s what we need to do for the market,” posited the former Sony exec. “To get more people playing, we need more people making. And to get more people playing, you know, ultimately I would like the game the game industry, or game machines, to have the same penetration rate [defined as ‘the percentage of a given market who uses a given product’] as television sets do.”
Turning to address the question of “How do you get there?”, Layden asserted, “I don’t think you get there by only having three manufacturers [for console hardware, those being Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft].”
“In my idealized dream,” the ex-PlayStation NA boss explained, “just like there’s a Blu-ray format, and an MP3 format, or an MEG format, or all these different formats that are agreed on by a consortium of industries, we need something similar in line for the game format. Like, ‘This will be the ‘game OS”.”
To this end, Layden then argued, “The architecture in the current version of PlayStation, the architecture in the current version of Xbox, and of high-end PCs are all quite close now. They’re all very similar and any changes or any enhancements to that, like we like to say in the studios, ‘only the dog can hear that’. You know, ‘We’re gonna have 20% more ray-tracing.’ Okay? I’m not sure what that did, but okay.”
“So, if we’re just making those changes around the edges I think that means we have a pretty good core game format OS,” he further detailed of his vision. “If the players could agree to come together, and then license that out just like we do with Blu-ray. Just like we do with compact discs. And let people compete on content, because I want more boxes out there. I want [high-end Danish electronics manufacturer] Bang & Olufson to have a $2,000 game box of some kind with this crazy, you know, technology behind it, and I want someone like a Hitachi to have a nice-priced family game box, all providing the same format but maybe, you know, not always 120 Hz on one machine, or maybe on this machine you get more-ray tracing.”
Drawing this particular part of the conversation to a close, the ex-PlayStation head summarized, “But in order to break through to, take gaming from not just being the most financially lucrative entertainment in the world at $250 billion worldwide, but make it also the most socially impactful entertainment.”
“We like to say if you go into a bar and ask someone what their favorite song is, you’ll get 100% return on that question,” he said. “If you ask go into a bar and ask what your favorite movie you should get 90% return on that question. If you ask the people in the room what their favorite video game is, I don’t know, 50% depending on what city, depending on what bar.” “So if we don’t get out of this these are two companies that build the two formats that all the games are played against oh three companies whatever yeah I don’t know how we grow.”
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