Shawn Layden: A common game format helps break console boundaries.
The former PlayStation executive believes the console market is stuck at 250 million units and proposes a common standard like DVD to expand the gaming industry.
Shawn Layden, a former senior executive at PlayStation, has just offered a remarkable analysis of the future of the video game industry. According to him, while the industry has grown into a $250 billion market, the dedicated gaming console segment is still facing a "ceiling" in terms of multi-generational user numbers.
The hardware market is limited to 250 million units.
In a recent interview on Naomi Kyle's YouTube channel "Pause for Thought," Shawn Layden argued that the traditional video game console market has reached a hard limit of approximately 250 million devices per generation. This figure includes the total sales of all the major players such as Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo combined.
Despite the continuous growth in the gaming industry's revenue thanks to the boom in mobile games and online services, the number of people owning physical console hardware has hardly increased proportionally over the past decades. Layden argues that the fragmentation across closed ecosystems is preventing access for a large number of potential customers.
Propose a unified format like VHS and DVD.
To break through this barrier, the former Sony executive proposed a revolutionary step: creating a unified gaming format. He cited the example of how common standards like VHS and DVD had helped the film and home video industries explode in scale by allowing content to run on devices from different manufacturers.
According to this vision, a common standard would help reduce barriers to market entry for users while optimizing hardware production costs. However, Shawn Layden also emphasized that having a common format does not mean completely eliminating individual identity. Companies can still preserve the value of strong, exclusive games on their platforms to attract users.
Challenges and balances
Transitioning to a common standard is a major technical and business challenge for hardware manufacturers today. However, with game development costs (AAA) skyrocketing, expanding the customer base beyond the traditional 250 million consoles is considered crucial for the sustainable growth of the console industry in the future.