The former PlayStation president explains the problem with exclusive games

Recently, the future of exclusive releases has become a hot topic of discussion in the gaming industry. In particular, we've seen Microsoft bring exclusive Xbox games from its internal teams to Switch and PlayStation. Meanwhile, Sony has released a major PS5 and PC exclusive at the same time, announcing more PC ports of its beloved titles in the meantime.

Now, his little stone came into this discussion to put an end to it Shawn Laydenwho lived for 30 years in Play Station He was even president of SIE America for a while, as well as head of global studios.

Therefore, speaking with GamesBeat, the former head of PlayStation explained that the exclusive availability of the game on one platform is a big problem when production costs reach levels that are unimaginable today.

“When a game costs more than $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles heel. It reduces the addressable market. Especially when you're in a live game service or a free-to-play world. Another platform is just another way to make a bigger funnel, to bring in more the people.

In the free-to-play world as we know it, 95% of people will never spend a penny. Business is about transformation. So you need to improve your chances by making your conversion funnel bigger. Helldivers 2 showed this for PlayStation, which was also released for PC at the same time. This has made the oppression even greater. “It brought more people.”

Of course, with Signle Player games, there's not the same pressure to release them on multiple platforms, Layden explained. However, he noted that if the budget reaches $250 million, companies still want to sell to as many people as possible, even if it is only 10%. He added to this:

“The global installed console base – if you look at the PS1 and everything else, wherever you look, the total number of consoles out there never exceeds 250 million. It doesn't exceed it.

Dollars have increased over time. But I look at this and I see that we are getting more money from the same people. This happened during the pandemic, which prompted many companies to overinvest. Look at our numbers, they're going up! We have to go after this missile!”

For more, you can find the full interview By clicking here.