Industry Giants Should do Better Protecting Games From Oblivion, Says Former PlayStation Boss
Shawn Layden, former head of PlayStation, has expressed his concern about some trends in the video game industry. In his opinion, big publishers do not care about games.
It is said that diamonds are eternal. Can the same be said of video games? Digital entertainment is certainly well documented, but according to a former PlayStation executive, the gaming industry should "protect video games from oblivion."
Old games in danger of extinction
Shawn Layden was recently a guest on the LAN Parties podcast (via VGC). Among the topics discussed was the topic of industry responsibility and how to counter the shrinking availability of older video games due to the closing of digital stores.
"I hope that more people in the industry, certainly the big players in this market, will start to realize that there is an obligation and responsibility. We create things that shouldn't be thrown away.
They [these games - ed. note] should be with us for a long time, because future generations will enjoy them in the same way we do, and it's reprehensible that we're not doing more to protect them."
These words may refer to Sony's decision to close three digital device stores: PS3, PSVita and PSP. In this way, gamers forever lost access to many titles available only on these devices.
A similar fate awaits games released for Xbox 360 - On July 29, 2024, the digital store on this venerable Microsoft console will be completely shut down. Although the director of the Xbox division, Phil Spencer, has admitted that he would like to find a way to save hundreds of Xbox 360 games after the closure of the X360 Marketplace, so far no such solution has been presented, and time waits for no one.
Better is the enemy of good
Another concern raised by the former PlayStation chief during the podcast was the ongoing consolidation among game developers, i.e. the buyout processes of smaller companies by large development studios and corporations.
"My concern about consolidation is that it often affects creativity. For example, some small independent studios are being bought out and incorporated into a larger conglomerate, and the larger it gets, the more time slows down.
I'm just concerned about how this affects creativity in studios, and can they keep this kind of independent creativity alive, or do they just get absorbed into the larger whole?"
Layden admitted that the whole process of unifying the game market negatively affects creativity, making studios unwilling to experiment, closing themselves off to existing genres.
Well, one can't disagree with many of the arguments. Let's hope that the future of gaming will look in more optimistic colors.
