Gamescom Asia’s 2024 event included many well-informed insights from some of the gaming industry’s best and brightest. Shawn Layden, former CEO and President of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, spoke at length about the unsustainability of AAA game development. Layden also talked to VGC at Gamescom Asia about incremental progress in consoles against the ballooning development costs.
“We’ve done these things this way for 30 years. Every generation those costs went up and we realigned with it,” Layden told the outlet. “We’ve reached the precipice now, where the center can’t hold, we cannot continue to do things that we have done before.” Layden continued, addressing what he believed a sustainable future for console gaming looked like. Layden’s perspective is it’s time for consoles to broaden their consumer base.
“It’s time for a real hard reset on the business model. A hard reset on what it is to be a video game. It’s not 80 hours, it’s not 90 hours, but if it is, that’s a whole different category. … We’re at the stage of hardware development that I call ‘only dogs can hear the difference.’”
console gaming is in a tough spot, so what now?
Realistically, it’s hard to imagine console gaming continuing as it is. Juxtaposed against the insane development costs, the time it takes to make a game that needs to be majorly successful to make a profit, and the continued layoffs of great talent, console gaming may need a hard reset.
Like Layden alluded to, that change likely includes games that take 30, 40, 50 hours to fully complete. I can only speak for myself, but I always lag behind with gaming’s biggest releases. Usually, I’m already playing a game that’ll take 40+ hours of my time. Sadly, I can imagine a future where RPGs become even more “niche.” Developers will be too afraid to commit years of their time when their hard work could be thrown out without warning. Publishers will be too afraid to take the financial risk when a FPS would take less time and turn a profit quicker.
Whatever gaming ends up looking like, we’ll have to adapt to the changes. It’s through these “impossible” periods where innovation emerges and exciting progress is made! Perhaps that’s naive, but for this tortured medium I’ve loved for as long as I’ve been able to comprehend art? I believe in its future.
The post ‘It Has Plateaued,’: Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming’s Future? appeared first on VICE.
The post ‘It Has Plateaued,’: Should We Be Worried About Console Gaming’s Future? appeared first on VICE.
