Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden: Disappearance of AA Games is a Threat to the Industry - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 November 2024 / 1,980 Views
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden speaking at Gamescom Asia with Raw Fury co-founder and chief publishing officer Gordon Van Dyke, Layden and reported by GamesIndsutry discussed the disappearance of AA games and why that is a bad thing for the gaming industry.
"[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking 'what's your monetization scheme,' or 'what's your recurrent revenue plan,' or 'what's your subscription formula?'" said Layden.
"We asked the simple question: is it fun? Are we having a good time? If you said yes to those questions, you'd usually get a green light. You didn't worry so much about the end piece, for better or for worse. Of course back then you didn't make a game for millions [of] dollars. So your risk tolerance was fairly high.
"Today, the entry costs for making a AAA game is in triple digit millions now. I think naturally, risk tolerance drops. And you're [looking] at sequels, you're looking at copycats, because the finance guys who draw the line say, 'Well, if Fortnite made this much money in this amount of time, my Fortnite knockoff can make this in that amount of time.' We're seeing a collapse of creativity in games today [with] studio consolidation and the high cost of production."
He added, "In the gaming business you have Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, indie stuff. But then that middle piece, that middle layer that used to be where Interplay, Gremlin, Ocean, THQ, all those companies, made their money... That middle piece is gone. If you [can become] AAA, you survive, or if you do something interesting in the indie space, you could. But AA is gone. I think that's a threat to the ecosystem if you will. So I'm looking at indie stuff… With the advent of technologies, like the latest Unreal Engine or what Unity can give you, I think we can all say that the standard quality of video games is pretty high now compared to ten years ago."
Layden is worried that if the industry mainly relies on the blockbuster AAA games that could be a "death sentence."
"Now if we can just get a bit more interest and excitement and exposure for these lower budget, but super creative and super unusual [type] of games... I'd like to see more of that. Because if we're just going to rely on the blockbusters to get us through, I think that's a death sentence."
He was asked what strategy the few remaining AA studios could adopt, and he said AA has a natural niche that brings "the new thing" rather than be "a dollar store version of God of War."
"Bring something that you sort of challenge yourself to see – the gaming media, this medium, is so flexible, it can do so many different things," he stated. "So, I think your strengths in AA are going to be [that] your time to market should be faster. You know, to get 1,500 developers to do the next [GTA], that's not the place you need to go for your AA. If you're a developer, you've got to be able to say, 'I can get something up and running in two to three and a half years.'"
He added, "If you're going to pitch me your AA game, and in the first two pages of your deck is your monetization and revenue, subscription scheme, I'm out. Your first page has to be 'This game needs to be made and here's why.' I want to see that fire, I don't want to see 'here's the chief accountant on the team that's going to explain to you the [game's monetization].'"
Layden doesn't think artificial intelligence (AI) is going to revolutionize the gaming industry.
"Artificial intelligence has been in gaming since almost the first or second games ever made," he reminded the audience. "So all this excitement about gen AI, I find kind of humorous. I do see its applications in certain places for certain things. But it's just a tool, it's not a saviour. It's a tool in the way that Excel is a tool. It just helps speed you along your tasks."
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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He's not wrong. If Sony had more AA games in between its giant hits, it would probably have more stable numbers and, perhaps more importantly, a fanbase that is more accepting of games like Astrobot instead of Last of Us.
Getting a Ratchet, Astrobot, Sackboy type game every year should be a goal for Sony.
To be fair the PS5 is less than 4 years old and they developed and released:
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Returnal, Astro, Sackboy and Ratchet.
So they are hitting that target. However they should have those titles a bit more spotlight instead of just announcing them one or two months in advance.
Housemarque will likely release a new title in 2025.
Here's the list of all mainline Nintendo Switch releases for 2024: Donkey Kong v Mario, Princess Peach Showtime!, Endless Ocean, Paper Mario TTYD, Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, Nintendo World Championship NES Edition, Super Famicon Detective: Emio, Zelda EoW, Mario Party Jamboree, and M&L Brothership.
...I might have missed some? This is all I'm remembering. As far as original AA titles are concerned, this is where Nintendo Switch blossoms: Can't think of a single month where NSW didn't recieve either a massive AAA release or a modest AA. Sony's done a good job this year pumping out AAA, though can't think of a single AA title they've released (besides Astro Bot)?
Literally one of the most successful titles this year I guess isn't enough huh? Helldivers 2.
( ? ) I said Sony has done a good job with AAA this year, though AA is a little lacking in quantity. HellDivers and Astro are two big AA hits!...but there aren't many other AA Sony titles to have released this year. Nintendo's pumped out an entire catologue of AA titles during a year where NSW is twilighting.
He replied to your closing remark that you can't think of a single Sony AA game released this year beside maybe AstroBot.
Otherwise it's true that Sony's A/AA output is a joke compared to Nintendo. But to be fair to Sony, they used to produce a ton of quality A or AA in the old days that only a few people actually bought. If Sony's lower budget games found as much success as Nintendo's, they wouldn't have shifted focus to AAA.
Edit: On the bright side, their two most recent AA games both did quite well, so hopefully they figured something out and they'll start producing more of them.
ah I see. My intention was more that I literally couldn’t recall any others, not that there weren’t any other notable AAs. (Can’t remember all the games Sony/Nintendo pump out in a given year lol.)
Lower budgets means more chance to experiment. Important in a creative industry.
AAA = A lot of money, A lot of resources, A lot of time.
AA = Alcoholics Anonymous.
Shawn, my man. You shut Evolution studios!
I wish there were more console AA games. Most of Nintendo's AAA titles, if not all, are admittedly AA in the scope of the industry.
Astro Bot seems more like an AA (it's not a low budget indie) and has been doing amazingly well.
That space is being filled, it's just from a different place and with a different vibe than what the console world recognizes as AA. If you look at the games that did really well on Steam the last few years, many of them come from small developers that no one has heard of before. Most of them are being made for PC first, not consoles--they don't come to consoles until later, if at all.
If the big boys want more AA type games on their platforms, that's where they need to look while being more proactive about funding projects that prioritize fun and inventiveness over polish. I know Sony and Microsoft have made efforts in that regard but I think they could get involved sooner, rather than waiting until something is already a hit on Steam. A lot of very inexpensive games, both in terms of budget and retail price, have made an absurd amount of money on PC alone because they aren't hamstrung by greedy executives who alienate the very people they depend upon for success.
The big publishers often try to remake these games in some form but they do so without understanding what made them popular in the first place.
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