Consoles are never getting a big leap in power again, as current systems are close to the final spec for what a console could be, according to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden.
Speaking with Eurogamer about the current state of the gaming industry and consoles, Shawn Layden provided some interesting insights on whether consoles can continue to exist in the long term, and if the console war will continue in the future. Taking Nintendo out of the equation, as the company has always managed to do things differently than anyone else, according to the former PlayStation boss, it’s time to start thinking about what the purpose of a proprietary console is. Generational leaps in the past have been huge on pretty much every front, but right now, we are getting to the point that differences between generations and systems are minimal, and most people are not interested in teraflops and ray tracing.
As such, the former PlayStation boss thinks that a big generational leap in power is never happening again, as the only leap that’s left to make is the creation of “perfectly-realised human actors in a game that you completely control,” which is something that he thinks will eventually happen. At this point, however, the innovation curve of hardware is starting to plateau, and the homogenization of gaming hardware results in very little differences between PlayStation and Xbox hardware, since both are powered by AMD. There will be improvements in the future, but we are now close to the final spec for what a console could be.
Ultimately, this could be the end of the console war, according to the former PlayStation boss, who gave the example of the Betamax, Sony’s short-lived answer to the VHS format. Eventually, the industry came together on the format, and the competition switched on the content. This should be the same in the gaming industry, as “content should be the competition for publishers, not which hardware you get behind.” For this reason, according to Shawn Layden, the console will become irrelevant in the next few generations.
Speaking about content, the former PlayStation boss provided some interesting comments regarding the possibility of Sony’s games releasing on either Xbox or Nintendo systems. PlayStation has been the market leader for almost every generation it has been, and with such a strong lead, there would be no reason to release games on competing hardware, as the small additional sales wouldn’t be worth it against the brand impact. Sony is already getting anger from users when they release a former PlayStation exclusive on PC 18 months later, and if this is happening on PC, it would be much, much worse by releasing games on Xbox consoles.
The former PlayStation boss’s comments on how there will never be a massive generational leap in the future are quite interesting, especially in light of Microsoft promising the biggest leap ever with their next Xbox. As machine learning will probably play a huge part in this leap, it will be very interesting to see how console gaming will evolve in the future, and if consoles will ever become irrelevant, as Shawn Layden expects.
