Former PlayStation executive Shawn Layden has said that the continued push towards more powerful and more expensive console hardware is unsustainable, arguing that “fighting for teraflops [is] “There is no place to be… We need to compete on content.”
Layden, who served as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment in the United States and president of International Studios before resigning from the company in 2019, was asked by VGC if the style of the console industry was sustainable, given the rise in prices. construction costs. associated with the continuous search for increasingly resistant hardware.
“We’ve done these things this way for 30 years,” Layden responded, “every generation those costs went up and we realigned with them. We’ve reached the precipice now, where the center can’t stand, we can’t continue.” do things we’ve done before.”
Layden mentioned that he believed it was a week for a “real hard reset” of the Trading Wave style of change, even a “hard reset of what it is to be a video game. It’s not 80 hours, it’s not 90 hours, but if It’s just a completely different category.”
He added that the effectiveness of using more rugged hardware had “stabilized” and would not appeal to most gamers. “We’re at the stage of hardware development that I call ‘only dogs can hear the difference,'” he insisted.
“If you’re gaming and sunlight comes through the window onto your TV, you don’t see any ray tracing. It has to be super optimal… you have to have an 8K monitor in a dark room to see this stuff… We are fighting for teraflops and that is not the place to compete on content. I think we have reached the ceiling.
Layden’s comments come ahead of Sony’s unused PlayStation 5 Pro console, which launches on November 7 and is essentially being promoted with the promise of greater performance and visual fidelity for supported PS4 and PS5 games. However, the device’s £700 bill hasn’t been received very well, raising the question of who exactly it is for.
