Console graphics cannot improve and are close to ‘final spec’ says ex-Sony boss-Adam Starkey-Entertainment – Metro

Layden was president of PlayStation from 2014 to 2019 (Michael Nelson/EPA/REX/Shutterstock)

Former PlayStation president Shawn Layden has said consoles have ‘started to plateau’, as he offers a compelling answer to how big budget games should change.

Between rising development costs and stagnating console sales, the future of the games console business has become a major talking point over the course of this year.

These concerns hang over Microsoft and Sony in particular as, unlike Nintendo, they have largely relied on jumps in technical power to sell each console generation. As those jumps become increasingly small, however, there’s a big question as to what the next Xbox and PlayStation can offer, to make themselves appealing to ordinary people.

This topic is one of the key talking points in a new interview with Shawn Layden, the former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment who has been pretty vocal recently about the games industry at large.

When asked by Eurogamer if he believes consoles can still exist in the long-term, Layden says Xbox and PlayStation ‘have to start interrogating what the purpose is of a proprietary console, and whether that can continue to be true’.

After going through the differences between early PlayStation consoles, Layden said: ‘Then to PlayStation 5, which is a fantastic piece of kit, but the actual difference in performance… we’re getting to the realm, frankly, where only dogs can hear the difference now.

‘You’re not going to see another PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2 jump in performance – we have sort of maxed out there. If we’re talking about teraflops and ray-tracing, we’re already off the sheet that most people begin to understand.’

Shawn Layden is spitting truths again (Andre Kosters/EPA/REX/Shutterstock) (Credits: Andre Kosters/EPA/REX/Shutterstock)

Asked if he thinks consoles will ever see another big leap in power again, he replied: ‘I don’t think so. I mean, what would that leap look like? It would be perfectly-realised human actors in a game that you completely control. That could happen one day. I don’t think it’s going to happen in my lifetime.

‘We’re at a point now where the innovation curve on the hardware is starting to plateau, or top out. At the same time, the commoditisation of the silicon means that when you open up an Xbox or PlayStation, it’s really pretty much the same chipset. It’s all built by AMD. Each company has their own OS and proprietary secret sauce, but in essence [it’s the same]. I think we’re pretty much close to final spec for what a console could be.’

Elsewhere in the interview, Layden reiterated past comments where he called for AAA games to be shorter, to combat costly development cycles.

‘It’s like we’re at the end of the 18th century, and we’re realising that building cathedrals is really expensive,’ Layden said. ‘Can we continue to build these massive edifices to God for this incredible amount of labour and time? Or should we just build four walls and a roof, and that’s a church, right? I’m afraid we’ve built AAA gaming into a kind of cathedral business, and it just can’t grow any further. In fact, it’s probably grown too far already.’

He added: ‘I would like to see a world where you can get back to 18 to 23 hours of gameplay, but with gameplay so compelling you don’t want to put the controller down. I want the entire game to be like that moment in Resident Evil where the freaking dogs come through the window and you drop the controller out of fear. I want more of those kinds of game moments, if we can bring down the scale and scope.’

Layden has been repeatedly on point over the past year, calling for more AAA experiences beyond Call Of Duty and Fortnite, and describing the death of AA games as a ‘threat to the ecosystem’.

As for the future of PlayStation, recent rumours suggest the inevitable PlayStation 6 will use AMD’s next gen UDNA architecture, which might come with a new Sony handheld.

An unsustainable horizon (Sony Interactive Entertainment)

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