There are more games being released every day than ever before, but the overall number of people playing them doesn’t seem to be increasing by nearly the same amount. previous Shawn Layden, Chairman of SIE Global Studios That mismatch can’t just be fixed by making endless big-budget sequels and more powerful hardware.
“If we’re just relying on blockbusters to get us through this, I think that’s a death sentence,” he told Gordon Van Dyke, co-founder of indie publisher Raw Fury, at Gamescom Asia this week. said. according to Game Industry Network. The former PlayStation executive blamed the nine-figure development costs on the reluctance of large publishers to take risks. The result is that games are approved based on how well they model revenue, rather than whether they are fun and innovative.
“Who are you [looking] In the sequel, you see copycats, because the finance people who draw the line say, ‘Well, if fort night Having made so much money during this time, my fort night Knockoffs can do that over such a long period of time,” Leyden said. “What we’re seeing today is a collapse of creativity in games [with] Studio integration and production costs are high.
The ‘hard reset’ of the console arms race
During the event, Raiden also asked gas chromatography If the incremental improvements demonstrated by the recent controversial $700 PS5 Pro are any indication of the limitations of new hardware. Despite the shocking price, the new console’s improvements will be difficult for fans to immediately discern. even Hands-on demonstration edge Said the difference is barely noticeable from 10 feet away.
“It has stabilized,” Leyden told gas chromatography. “We’re in a phase of hardware development that I call ‘Only a dog can hear the difference.'” If you’re playing a game and sunlight shines through a window into your TV, you won’t see any ray tracing. It has to be super optimal… you have to have an 8K monitor in a dark room to see these things.
The executive said the console power hunt has reached a “ceiling” and called on companies to compete on content rather than specs. “It’s time for a real hard reset of the business model, a hard reset of the very nature of video games,” he told us gas chromatography.
This isn’t the first time for the former Sony veteran The alarm bell has sounded About the long-term healthy development of the game industry. Layden abruptly left the PlayStation console maker in 2019, followed by major changes in senior leadership that he had long warned The unsustainable trajectory of big-budget games With each new hardware cycle comes the stagnation of media that brings in more revenue every year without increasing the overall size of their audience.
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“This is a $250 billion global business, but the actual number of players is not growing at the same rate,” Layden said in an interview with Gordon Van Dyke at Gamescom Asia. “So we’re getting more money from the same people. You need to get more people playing games. How do you do that? We need to get more people making games.” He suggested that companies look to continue to develop games for countries like Indonesia and India. Support up-and-coming developers in a growing market.
But while many have bemoaned the death of AA games, the middle ground between low-budget indies and $200 million blockbusters, it’s clear that some studios are still able to hit this increasingly precarious sweet spot. success. Last year it was Ruins IIone dark souls– Injected loot shooter. This year is Warhammer 40,000: Space Marines 2a shooter that’s affiliated with a huge franchise but still manages to deliver a beautiful game Less than half the budget Destroy eternity. Maybe next year Chiaroscuro: Expedition 33French Impressionist Improvisation final fantasy The turn-based RPG formula looks great Its surprising $50 price point.
Or low-budget Steam hits are the new AA. friend world, lord of the manorand Balatero Even without the support of a huge publishing machine, its sales reached millions of dollars. “AA is gone,” Leyden said. “I think it’s a threat to the ecosystem, if you will. So I’m looking for something independent. As technology comes out, like the latest Unreal Engine or what Unity has to offer, I think we can all say , the standard quality of video games is quite high now compared to a decade ago.
