Google, Amazon, Apple, and Netflix are among the companies that Shawn Layden fears for the gaming industry.

Layden attended the Gamesindustry Investment Summit in Seattle, where he spoke to the site’s editor-in-chief, Christopher Dring. To put it mildly, he was highly critical of non-endemic or non-native companies. Layden thinks that some companies are not in the gaming industry by default and that they are the most dangerous. (Google has already tried with Stadia, but the in-house development team, Stadia Games & Entertainment, was quickly axed, even though it was headed by Jade Raymond, who is now at Sony’s Haven Studios and is known for Splinter Cell and Assassin’s Creed at Ubisoft, ran Google’s studio!)

“First, consolidation can be an enemy of creativity. I also think rising costs in gaming are an existential threat to all of us. And the entry of non-endemics into the sector – otherwise known as the ‘barbarians at the gate.’ Right now, we see all the big players going, ‘Oh, gaming? It’s bringing in billions of dollars a year? I want a piece of that,’ so we have Google, Netflix, Apple, and Amazon wanting to get a piece and trying to disrupt our industry.

I’m hoping gaming will be the first industry where we disrupt ourselves, where it doesn’t take a Google or an Amazon to flip the table completely. We should be smart enough to see these changes and prepare for that eventuality. [Sony] knew enough that entertainment was its beast, so Electronics knew it couldn’t manage this business by taking all the guys from the CD division and going after games. So, in the company’s initial stages, it was a joint venture between Sony Electronics and Sony Music Japan. They knew they had to bring the entertainment… right from the beginning. The people handling the advertising, marketing, publisher relations, and PR – all Sony Music guys – were soliciting publishers to support the platform.

PlayStation knew we couldn’t do what SEGA and Nintendo did and [provide the bulk of the software]. We didn’t know enough how to make it. We had to be the third-party platform, so we had to get Namco, Square, EA, Activision. Those Sony Music guys are the ones that got Square to move Final Fantasy VII off of Nintendo and onto PlayStation, probably the most significant sea change move. So yeah, we weren’t endemic, but I think we brought the entertainment piece in, which helped accelerate the success of PlayStation. Other companies thought, ‘We have IP, there’s money in the games space, so let’s make games. How hard can it be?’ Then, they all crashed and burned. And 20 years later, you have all these big tech firms, they’ve got this cloud infrastructure, and they’re like, ‘Let’s make games. How hard can it be?’ and it turns out it’s pretty hard,” Layden said.

Layden says we must consider what has happened in other entertainment industries. In the case of music, Apple has upended everything by making the public accept that it’s a good idea to buy a song for a dollar. In the case of Netflix, the licensing of movies to watch at home instead of in the cinema has brought about the change. Google has already proven that technology (and money) is insufficient to develop games. Twenty-five years ago, the movie studios (MGM, Fox) tried it, and they are no longer there…

Source: Gamesindustry