Sean Layden, former CEO of SIE America and chairman of Worldwide Studios, reiterated the importance of exclusivity in a recent podcast appearance.
On the What's Up PlayStation podcast, the former Sony executive spoke about the importance of the company's games and their function in the market.
“Exclusivity is always important, and it helps focus and highlight the capabilities of the platform. What can we technically do here that we can't do elsewhere?
“But I think as the market realizes its place in the pantheon of gaming options and the platform becomes more established, the need for exclusivity will fade a little bit.”
In a recent interview with Gamesbeat, the former PlayStation frontman described ballooning budgets for first-party games as his “Achilles heel.”
“When a game costs over $200 million, exclusivity becomes the Achilles heel,” Layden told Gamesbeat. “It shrinks the addressable market, especially if you're in the world of live service games and free-to-play. Another platform is just another way to open up the funnel and get more people on board. is.
Elsewhere on the podcast, Leyden also discusses PlayStation's early exclusivity philosophy and how its focus on being an open platform for third parties differentiated it from Sega and Nintendo. Told.
“PlayStation has never been a first-party driven platform. If you look at Nintendo and Sega in the '90s, their first-party products had the lion's share of the software market. They could also publish on the N64. You can, but the top 10 games there will always be Nintendo games.
“PlayStation always started with a focus on the third-party platform business.
“First party doesn't exist to steal market share from Electronic Arts or Square. First party exists to grow the pie.”
