PlayStation’s former boss Shawn Layden has defended full-on exclusive games in an era where they’ve become somewhat rarer.
Shawn Layden, who led Sony Interactive Entertainment through most of its dominant PS4 generation, recently appeared on the Pause for Thought podcast and had some interesting things to say about the changing ways platform holders treat their first-party games.
“I don’t think every game has to be console exclusive,” he said. “I don’t think every game should be console-exclusive, but I do accept the fact that if you’re going to have platform companies, like Sony and Nintendo – and Microsoft is actually more of the ‘Xbox is everywhere’ anyway – there is huge value to the brand in having strong exclusives.”
“If Mario starts appearing on PlayStation, that’s the apocalypse, right? Cats and dogs living together. And the same goes for Nathan Drake and Uncharted. They make the platforms sing,” he added, before noting that multiplatform games “code to the lowest denominator,” so exclusive games are a good excuse to “push every lever to 11.”
Layden’s comments come at a time where Xbox is porting almost all of its former exclusives to rival consoles, while PlayStation has begun handing games like Helldivers 2 and Lego Horizon Adventures to Microsoft and Nintendo respectively. Most PS5 exclusives hit PC after some time, too, although Nintendo hasn’t shown a slither of interest in sharing its own IP.
“I think, there will be some exclusive titles still in the future, but certainly if you’re looking for a massive multiplayer game, then you almost have to go multiplatform because you have to rip that funnel open as wide as possible to get people in there,” Layden continued. “Certainly if you’re going free-to-play.”
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