Shawn Layden issues warning about non-endemics breaking into games

04.09.2023 - 16:05 / gamesindustry.biz / Christopher Dring / Shawn Layden

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox

Non-endemic companies such as Google and Amazon are among the biggest threats to the games industry.

That's according to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden, who shared his thoughts on the future of games during the keynote at last week's GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit in Seattle.

Speaking on stage with GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring, Layden listed his three biggest concerns among the many challenges the industry faces in the coming years.

"First, consolidation can be an enemy of creativity," he said, referring to the large-scale acquisitions and wave of studio closures we've seen in recent years. "I also think rising costs in gaming are an existential threat to all of us. And the entry of non-endemics into the sector – otherwise known as the 'barbarians at the gate.'

"Right now we see all the big players going, 'Oh, gaming? It's bringing in billions of dollars a year? I want a piece of that' And so we have Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon wanting to get piece and trying to disrupt out industry."

Layden said the industry should take heed of what happened to other entertainment industries. Music, he said by way of example, was irreversibly disrupted when Apple "convinced everyone that 99 cents per song was a good idea." Similarly, he said Netflix has disrupted the movie business – which used to centre around going to cinemas – buy "getting some content, getting some licences, and nailing it to your house."

"I'm hoping gaming will be the first industry to disrupt ourselves, [without] a Google or an Amazon to flip the table"

"I'm hoping gaming will be the first industry where we disrupt ourselves," he continued. "Where it doesn’t take a Google or an Amazon to completely flip the table. We should be smart enough to see these changes coming and prepare ourselves for that eventuality."

Layden added that some of the larger companies have "figured out that just having tech doesn't mean you can make a game." This was perhaps best demonstrated by the shutdown of Stadia last year, just three years after Google's cloud gaming service launched.

Dring countered that both the market-leading PlayStation and its rival Xbox were introduced by companies that were non-endemic to the games industry. Layden acknowledged this but observed that Sony, for one, understood its own limitations when it came to entering the games market.

"[Sony] knew enough that entertainment was its own beast, so Electronics knew it couldn't manage this business by taking all the guys from the CD division and go after games," he explained. "So in the initial stages of the company, it was a joint venture between Sony Electronics and Sony Music