An interesting report this morning over at the ever-reliable Dark Horizons. An industry insider has claimed that the console wars are almost over. Shawn Layden was the top man in the PlayStation division at Sony from 2014-2019, leaving just as the PlayStation 5 launched. He is now a strategic advisor at China’s Tencent, the world’s largest video game vendor.
Video Games Chronicle spoke to Layden at Gamescom Asia and asked him if the current technological improvements would continue exponentially.
Here is what he said:
“It has plateaued. We’re at the stage of hardware development that I call ‘only dogs can hear the difference.’
If you’re playing your game and sunlight is coming through your window onto your TV, you’re not seeing any ray tracing. It has to be super optimal…you have to have an 8K monitor in a dark room to see these things.
We’re fighting over teraflops and that’s no place to be. We need to compete on content. Jacking up the specs of the box, I think we’ve reached the ceiling. That race is nearly over, and you know who won? AMD.”
Why AMD? They provide the chipset for both Xbox and PlayStation.
He also gave an interview to GameIndustry.Biz, where he made some more barned comments about who really makes decisions in today’s industry:
“[In the past] we spent a lot more time looking at games and not asking ‘what’s your monetisation scheme’, or ‘what’s your recurrent revenue plan’, or ‘what’s your subscription formula’? 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.
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.”
So video games are now, basically, in the same place as blockbuster cinema? Established IPs rule and low-risk appetite keeps it that way.
What do you think? Are the console wars coming to an end?