The video game industry is huge, but it's not growing at the pace it needs to. While the industry saw a record boom in gaming engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has now returned to usual levels, four years into the ninth generation of consoles. Why is the games industry not growing? The answer is TikTok, thinks Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios.
Speaking to Eurogamer to celebrate PlayStation's 30th anniversary, Layden says that the company's real competition is social media and anything else that attracts attention away from gaming, and not Xbox or Nintendo as gamers would expect.
"Even when you hear that gaming revenue went up 23 percent during the pandemic, it wasn't from new people, necessarily," he said.
"It was more money from the same people, and this is the existential threat I talk about when I'm meeting with developers and publishers - that you're just getting more money off the same people. It's a business model I understand, and you understand, and that's fine. But we're not growing the next generation. We're losing the next generation to TikTok. The competition for gaming isn't Xbox and Nintendo. It's everything else in the freaking zeitgeist that can take your time away from your gaming activity."
One way platform holders can increase their user base is by publishing their first-party games elsewhere. Xbox has already released multiple games on PlayStation, including the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which releases on PS5 a few months after its Xbox debut.
However, Layden doesn't think that publishing PlayStation games on Xbox is a viable answer. "So the question you're asking is: should PlayStation, with that huge market lead and the momentum, apparently, going forward, should they build versions of their games to run on a competing platform of much smaller size and scale?" he asks.
"As the saying goes, I don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze. How many additional sales would they get versus the brand impact, all the aggro? You know the Sony fanbase gets really upset whenever a game comes out on PC, 18 months after the original release on PlayStation. I never understood that aggro but, you know, it's there. And if that's what they're going to say about a PC release, just imagine what the market would say about Xbox releases from PlayStation Studios."
In contrast, Layden believes that PlayStation and Nintendo can live harmoniously, "almost like a natural pairing."
There's also another issue: the cost of video games has risen exponentially in the relentless pursuit of realistic graphics. How can the industry cut back on its expenses? The former PlayStation boss thinks "games are too long" and therefore need to be trimmed down.
You can join in on PlayStation's 30th anniversary celebrations by downloading the free PS5 themes for the occasion. If you ever owned a PS2, the world's best-selling console, the try out the PS2-specific background theme and system sounds on the PS5, available for a limited time. PlayStation has also released a free-to-play Gran Turismo game for newcomers to the iconic franchise.
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