A recent controversy involves none other than the former president of Sony, the Japanese company that, along with Microsoft, has been a strong advocate for the exclusivity of video games on a global scale, with obvious exceptions and distances from Nintendo. Shawn Layden, now a strategic advisor for Tencent Games, makes some shocking statements outside of Sony: exclusive console games are a thing of the past and bad for the industry.
Titles like Helldivers 2 have been a torpedo for certain studios and companies. Nowadays, including handheld consoles, launching a game without being multiplatform is a nonsensical move not suitable for executives with heart problems, because not only do you have to make it work and be well-received, but limiting oneself to a single platform is like putting doors on a field, or rather, fencing it off with cliffs.
The former Sony president now sees it clearly: exclusive console games are bad for the industry.
In an interview with Venturebeat, Layden had the opportunity to discuss the state of the gaming sector and his new projects. Ignoring the more professional and direct part of the former president of what would now be Sony PlayStation Studios, the fact that exclusive games are bad for the industry is a view that needs explanation:
When a game’s costs exceed $200 million, exclusivity is its Achilles’ heel. It reduces its addressable market. Especially when you’re in the world of live service or free-to-play games. Another platform is simply another way of opening the funnel and attracting more people.
In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% of those people will never spend a cent. The business is about conversion. You have to improve your odds by opening the funnel. Helldivers 2 has shown this for PlayStation, releasing on PC at the same time. Again, the funnel widens. You get more people in.
Many claim that the sector is in crisis due to poor pandemic management.
When COVID-19 arrived, the world stopped. Everyone locked themselves away waiting for vaccines and accurate diagnoses, and this boosted video game sales like never before. Layden addresses this as an effect of wanting to earn more and more money, logically, because investment has been out of control:
If you’re spending $250 million, you’ll want to be able to sell your game to as many people as possible, even if it’s just 10% more. In the global console base, for example, if you go back to the PS1 and everything else accumulated there, wherever you look, accumulated consoles never exceed 250 million.
It’s simply not the case. Dollars have been rising over time. But I look at that and see that we’re just taking more money from the same people. That happened during the pandemic, which led many companies to invest too much. Look at our rising numbers! We have to chase that rocket!
We’re not doing enough to get people who haven’t used consoles before involved in console gaming. We’re not going to attract them by doing more of the same stuff we’re doing now. If 95% of the world doesn’t want to play Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto, is the industry just going to make more Call of Duty, Fortnite, and Grand Theft Auto? That won’t get you anyone else.
The conditionality involved in creating consoles that will never be profitable.
Layden may have a point, but this reflection comes when he is no longer with Sony, because before that, he would never have thought that exclusives were bad for the gaming industry. Now that the Japanese are opening up, beyond his mandate and in another company, the rhetoric changes.
The reality is that having exclusives was only worth it when companies making consoles could profit from the sold hardware, if not initially, at least throughout its lifespan. As we’ve seen, this is no longer the case and will never be, as costs continuously rise, so opening up to all markets with their games is the option to make money. In short, it is a consequence of a budget adjustment, not a change in the sector, since on PC nothing changes beyond welcoming those exclusives with open arms, which, luckily for everyone, will become a thing of the past.
The article Former Sony President now says console-exclusive games are bad for the industry first appears on El Chapuzas Informático.
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