Spending $200 million on a video game and launching it exclusively for a single platform isn’t the greatest idea these days, according to Shawn Layden, former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, who mentioned in a new interview with GamesBeat’s Dean Takahashi last week about how console exclusivity is an “Achilles’ heel” for companies, one that reduces the market and overall reach of a game. Layden’s statement comes just weeks after the release of HELLDIVERS 2, the new co-op third-person shooter from Arrowhead Game Studios that PlayStation, apparently wisely, decided to launch for both PS5 and PC on February 8, 2024.
Takahashi mentioned:
… Phil Spencer talked about the decisions they’ve made to take some games to Sony’s platform, to other platforms. One thing he said was that what everyone needs is for the market to grow. When the market’s not growing, it explains a lot of the suffering going on, and the need to rethink.
To which Layden agreed:
Absolutely. When your costs for a game exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel. It reduces your addressable market. Particularly when you’re in the world of live service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% percent of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open. Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.
Layden goes on to point out the limitations of the console market:
… The global installed base for consoles–if you go back to the PS1 and everything else stacked up there, wherever in time you look at it, the cumulative consoles out there never gets over 250 million. It just doesn’t. The dollars have gone up 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 made a lot of companies overinvest. Look at our numbers going up! We have to chase that rocket!
Discussion (3 replies)
Join Discussion →File this one under "no sh1t sherlock".
On the other hand, it's the only real reason to get a specific console, cuz of the games you can only play on it. Personally I never liked it though. I feel like I should be able to decide which platform would work best for me for any particular game. 99.98% of the time that's gonna be PC.
As I've been saying for the past few years now, 9th-gen really feels like this might be the first console generation where I don't end up with a console, ever since I started in 3rd-gen with a 2nd-gen console. Well, technically my Switch is a 9th-gen console (cuz it follows 8th-gen Wii U and/or 8th-gen 3DS), so I guess I'm technically part of this gen. But after this, I dunno about that. By the time the 2000s rolled around I wanted EVERYTHING on PC. Now it seems that is finally happening, more or less. Well except for Nintendo, but the community has provided a solution for that.
I'm not so sure about that. At release they might be leaving money on the table, but over the entire life cycle of a game sadly I think they make more by double or triple dipping. Ie.: Release the game on your current gen console, then release an enhanced edition on your next gen one soon after. Then release a remastered edition that you bring to PC after the fact.
Some enthusiasts might end up buying all versions.
Same here. My first console was a PS2 Slim, as that was the first I could afford. Which I sold long before I eventually got a PS3 Slim with a Move controller. My last console was a PS4 Pro that I got during the 2017 holidays. Sold that in 2022, just before Christmas it fetched a good sum, I almost got the original buying price back 5 years later, which is crazy.
If not for the chip shortage / scalpers I'd probably have ended up with a PS5, but now I'm glad that I couldn't get one. As I don't even want it anymore.
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