In a nutshell: Shawn Layden is singling out platform exclusivity as one of the main challenges the modern gaming industry must address. Consumers are different now, and big companies like Sony or Microsoft need to understand how to properly serve them without shooting themselves in the foot.
Before being appointed as Tencent Games' new strategic advisor, Shawn Layden held various roles at Sony. The former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios (now simply known as PlayStation Studios) said in a recent interview that exclusivity is the Achilles' heel of modern gaming development.
Layden talked with VentureBeat about the turbulent times the industry is facing right now, offering his advice after joining Sony in the 1980s and spending multiple decades in the business. Development costs for a single AAA game now exceed $200 million, Layden said, which means that you cannot afford to sell it on just one hardware platform.
Exclusivity reduces the publishers' addressable market, especially when the world is providing so many live-service games or free-to-play products. Bringing a game to additional platforms means "opening the funnel" to get more people in, he said.
In the free-to-play world, exclusivity makes no sense, as 95 percent of users are expected to spend absolutely nothing on a game. Layden remarks on how Helldivers 2 proved this simple truth, coming out on PlayStation and PC simultaneously. Hardware developers are always trying to maintain their "stranglehold" on the business by creating platform-exclusive games, which has proven to be a lucrative practice so far.
But "consumer minds are changing," Layden said, and they are not buying a new mobile phone every nine months anymore. Hardware companies will not be able to retain their exclusivity stranglehold for long, and they need to accept a new future where people will get their gaming fix in different ways – and in different places.
The "beast" of gaming is adapting to these new business opportunities, and marketplace strangleholds can't be maintained forever, Layden added. Console manufacturers are indeed showing that they are now more willing to provide enhanced support for other platforms.
Sony recently confirmed its plans to bring PS5-exclusive games to PC, while Microsoft is working to port Xbox and PC exclusive titles to PlayStation 5. As for mobile, things are still a bit hectic, and Apple is trying to keep its stranglehold on the iOS marketplace as long as it can. Brussels authorities are watching.