Throughout a Gamescom Asia panel, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden spoke in regards to the present state of the gaming trade and the way the disappearance of AA studios had contributed to a “collapse of creativity” in fashionable video games. Layden defined how the rise in improvement prices had led to studios inserting a stronger emphasis on post-launch monetization plans and following traits to stay risk-adverse.
“You did not fear a lot in regards to the finish piece, for higher or for worse. Of course again then you definately did not make a sport for hundreds of thousands [of] {dollars}. So your threat tolerance was pretty excessive, Layden mentioned (via GamesIndustry.Biz). “Immediately, the entry prices for making a AAA sport is in triple-digit hundreds of thousands now. I feel, naturally, threat tolerance drops. And also you’re [looking] at sequels, you are taking a look at copycats, as a result of the finance guys who draw the road say, ‘Nicely, if Fortnite made this a lot cash on this period of time, my Fortnite knockoff could make this in that period of time.’ We’re seeing a collapse of creativity in video games right this moment [with] studio consolidation and the excessive price of manufacturing.”
Layden added that whereas the standard of indie video games had risen, the AA area that had been dominated by firms like Interaction, Gremlin, Ocean, and THQ has seemingly vanished. With the choices being both indie video games or AAA blockbusters, Layden believes that this can be a harmful state of affairs for the gaming trade to be in proper now.
“Now if we are able to simply get a bit extra curiosity and pleasure and publicity for these lower-budget, however super-creative and super-unusual [types] of video games. I might prefer to see extra of that. As a result of if we’re simply going to depend on the blockbusters to get us via, I feel that is a loss of life sentence,” Layden mentioned.
This is not the primary time that Layden has been vocal about how sport improvement prices have develop into unsustainable, as again in 2020, he talked about how the AAA trade wanted to return to creating extra 12- to 15-hour video games. PlayStation’s efficiency this 12 months, there is likely to be some reality to these phrases as the corporate’s huge new live-service shooter Harmony was taken offline shortly after launch, whereas its new platformer Astro Bot acquired an overwhelmingly optimistic reception. Whereas the gross sales numbers for Astro Bot have not been revealed but, it is probably way over that of Harmony, given the circumstances.
One other instance of a sport with a powerful single-player identification discovering business and important success can be Warhammer 40K: Area Marine 2, as Saber Interactive chief artistic officer Tim Willits lately spoke about how the sport can succeed with no need to hit absurdly excessive gross sales figures.