While Gamelab Live the former PlayStation boss called on the game industry to investigate the trend to produce bigger and more expensive games over and over again. Shawn Layden believes it is “just not sustainable” for the industry. Layden spoke out during a conversation The Last of Us Part 2, a game that lasts about 25 hours. The predecessor took about 15 hours to finish. Future PS5 games may be a lot shorter.
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‘The good old days’
It goes without saying that when a game takes longer to develop, the production price rises. Yet it is true that the price for AAA games has been around 60 euros for years. Layden describes the PlayStation 4 era as ‘the ultimate example’. The ex-president still remembers the days when the biggest games on the market had a $ 1 million production budget. He referred to a theory that doubled production costs with each new generation of consoles.
“The problem with that model is that it’s just not sustainable,” says Layden. The American then explains that the development price of an AAA game for the current generation costs about 80 to 150 million dollars and that without marketing.
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“The price has been 60 euros since I started in this industry, but the cost of games has increased ten times. If you don’t have elasticity at the price level, but you have a big movement on the cost line, the model will be more difficult. I believe that the next generation will see these two requirements collide. ”
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According to Layden, the entire industry should start thinking about what is made and what the public expects. Developers have to think about what they want to tell and how they want to tell it. According to him, a much shorter game can then come out against a much better budget.
Longer PS5 games shorter?
Layden thinks the solution to the problem is simple. The ‘older gamer’ would not mind seeing a return to 12-15 hours. “First of all, I could play more games, and, like a well-edited piece of literature or a movie, the content could become more compelling.”
This is only one person’s opinion. It is therefore questionable whether PS5 games or other triple A products will become shorter in the future.
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