Console makers ‘need to compete on content’ rather than ‘fighting over teraflops’, says former PlayStation executive

Former PlayStation CEO Sean Layden has suggested that the continued push towards more powerful – and more expensive – console hardware is unsustainable, arguing that “fighting over teraflops”. [is] “There’s nowhere to be…we need to compete on content.”

Layden — who served as CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America and chairman of Worldwide Studios before leaving the company in 2019 — was asked by VGC Whether the console industry’s current business model is sustainable, given the increasing development costs associated with the constant pursuit of increasingly more powerful hardware.

“We’ve done these things this way for 30 years, and with every generation these costs have gone up and we’ve realigned them,” Leyden replied. “We have reached the abyss now, where the center cannot hold, and we cannot continue to do so.” Do the things we did before.”

Layden said he believes it’s time for a “real radical reset” of the industry’s current business model, and even “a hard reset of what a video game is. It’s not 80 hours, it’s not 90 hours, but if it is that’s a whole different category.”

He added that the effectiveness of chasing more powerful devices has “stabilised”, and is unlikely to appeal to the majority of players. He continued: “We are in the stage of developing devices that I call ‘Only dogs can hear the difference.'”

“If you’re playing your game and sunlight is coming through your window to your TV, you won’t see any ray tracing. It has to be absolutely perfect… You have to have an 8K screen in a dark room to be able to watch this stuff… We’re fighting On teraflops and this is not a place to compete for content. I think we have reached the ceiling by raising the box specifications.

Layden’s comments come ahead of the launch of Sony’s new PlayStation 5 Pro console, which will launch on November 7 and is primarily marketed on the promise of improved performance and visual fidelity for supported PS4 and PS5 games. However, the device’s £700 price tag was not particularly well received, which led to its price being raised A question for whom exactly.