If you click on a link and make a purchase we may receive a small commission.Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has opened up on his thoughts about the modern games industry, stating that"exclusivity is the"Achilles' heel" of the modern development cycle., Layden detailed how he thinks the industry has changed since he joined Sony in the 1980s, working his way up to become president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America in 2014.
"In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95 per cent of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open. Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.
"You have to decide, at what point do you murder your darlings?" Layden added."At what point does having this chokehold on everything that comes across your platform – it's been a lucrative marketplace for you, but consumer minds are changing. Consumers aren't buying a new mobile phone every nine months or whatever it used to be.