The former president of Worldwide Studios at Sony Interactive Entertainment believes that the lifespan of AAA games will have to be lowered as the cost of development will increase more and more and could therefore affect the sale price.
Shawn Layden, ex-YOU Worldwide Studios, was one of the many guests of the 2020 edition of the Gamelab Barcelona event. During his intervention, it was about the future of the video game world. For the man who led Sony’s first-party studios for several years, the lifespan of current AAAs will be a problem for the new generation of consoles because they are expensive to produce: “The problem with today’s model is that it just isn’t sustainable. I don’t think in the next generation you can take those numbers and double them and think you can evolve. I think the industry as a whole has to ask themselves and say ‘Okay, what are we creating? What are the public’s expectations? What’s the best way to get our story across and say what we need to say? ‘ It is difficult for each adventure game to target the 50-60 hour game milestone, as it will be much more expensive to achieve. And in the end, you can shut down some interesting designer studios and their stories out of the market if that’s the kind of threshold they have to hit … We have to reassess that. Going into the next generation is not only an important role in management… It is also, perhaps, really assessing what we can keep putting into games – at what cost can you keep creating this games ?”
Now @ShawnLayden “My job at Worldwide Studios was to clear the way for studios to carry their dreams forward with every game”
Join now live: https://t.co/nZ4AVZUBdq#gamelablive pic.twitter.com/AJEqoDY4cy
— Gamelab Conference (@gamelab) June 23, 2020
He explains that production costs will not go down with the Sony PS5 and the Xbox Series X of Microsoft. The figures have doubled compared to the previous generation, between 80 and 150 million dollars over five years on average for current AAAs, excluding marketing costs: “All costs related to games are labor costs, right? You don’t have to build a factory. You don’t have to turn sand into glass. It’s just creativity and your ability to bring like-minded people together to get something done, but it’s all about people… it’s all the costs associated with it. So how can we see that and say ‘Is there another answer? Instead of spending five years creating an 80-hour game, what do three years and a 15-hour game look like? How much would it cost?”
The gaming industry will have to develop shorter AAA games
If production costs have increased over time, Shawn Layden says the games have been sold at the same price for a long time. A trend that may well change: “The games are at 59.99 dollars (note: 69.99 euros in France according to the recommended retail price) since I started in this business, but the cost of games has increased ten times. If you don’t have price elasticity, but you have huge volatility on the cost line, the model becomes more difficult. I think this generation will see these two imperatives collide“. The quick fix? Decrease the lifespan of AAA games: “Personally, as an older player … I would welcome a return to the AAA games from 12 to 15 hours. I’d finish more games, first of all, and just like a well-produced book or movie, I’d watch the discipline that could give us tighter, more compelling content. This is something I would like to see come back to this industry.“
–
