Shawn Layden is no rookie, and when it comes to the gaming industry, he mostly knows what he's talking about. After all, he was the head of PlayStation between the years 2014 and 2019, and currently holds a role as a strategic advisor for Tencent Games.
Recently, Shawn took part in a discussion on IGN Live (thanks, GamesRadar) where the topic was the well-being of the industry, and where the former PlayStation boss took the opportunity to share some interesting opinions. He believes that the gaming industry should be standardised, and that the console war must end.
"Xbox, PlayStation, high-end PC, that's almost at a plateau where all things being equal, they're pretty much the same. We'd be in a better world if we could get down to one standard home console technology that we could come together, and get this platform war thing out of the way."
Layden mentioned how the industry is certainly expanding in terms of revenue, but that the amount of consoles sold has reached a plateau around 250 million units and doesn't seem to be growing beyond that.
"If you look at the history of consoles, the global install base in any one of those generations never rose above 250 million. There was that one point when Wii came out, and thanks to Wii Fit, an extra 20 million units were sold because everyone thought they could lose weight. But that wasn't sustainable and came crashing down and we're still in that 250 million overall install base of active consoles."
Do you agree with what Layden says, should the industry be standardised with just one console?