Many eyebrows were raised when Shawn Layden announced in 2019 that he would be leaving Sony, PlayStation and his position as head of SIE Worldwide Studios. There was widespread speculation that a falling out was behind the decision, with him being replaced by Jim Ryan, but he has since claimed in interviews that this was not the case.
Whatever the reason, he has more insight into the games industry than most of us - and he is unfortunately not happy about the current status. Games today take so long to develop that major series often skip a generation entirely. For example, no new mainline The Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto was released for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One, and there will almost certainly be no new Red Dead Redemption or Fallout this generation, and a studio like Naughty Dog has so far not released a single new game for PlayStation 5 beyond re-releases.
This, Layden believes, is a "death sentence" for the gaming world, and he says that the creative drought is huge because no one dares to take risks. Here's what he said at Gamescom Asia (via GamesIndustry):
"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.
Now if we can just get a bit more interest and excitement and exposure for these lower budget, but super creative and super unusual [type] of games... I'd like to see more of that. Because if we're just going to rely on the blockbusters to get us through, I think that's a death sentence."
Layden also comments on how game development has changed, where he thinks entertainment value is now secondary:
"[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking 'what's your monetization scheme', or 'what's your recurrent revenue plan', or 'what's your subscription formula'? We asked the simple question: is it fun? Are we having a good time? If you said yes to those questions, you'd usually get a green light."
As we have previously reported, Layden has long called for a return to less complex games that don't have to be so incredibly bloated. It's something that would undoubtedly allow for more game releases, where previously it was common for entire trilogies to be released for a single console, such as Gears of War and Mass Effect.
What do you think about things yourself, is it pure nonsense from Layden or is it time for the gaming industry to scale down its ambitions and try to focus more on providing entertainment again?