Former head of PlayStation does not believe in the AI revolution. He believes its impact on games is vastly overestimated, and compares it to Excel

Shawn Layden is an industry veteran who, until 2019, led Sony Worldwide Studios and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s American division. In a recent interview with gamesindustry.biz, he discussed not only the future of consoles and massive games, but also the role of generative AI in game development.

Layden isn’t as optimistic about AI as many others who hope it will drastically cut production costs and speed up development. He stated:

Shawn Layden, however, expects that studios will increasingly rely on outsourcing. He explains that outsourcing is now far more effective than it used to be, since both sides have learned how to communicate proper, unlike in the past, when an outsourcing company might have had to redo something nine times before getting it right.

Layden thinks that using AI alongside outsourcing could help cut costs, but he expects it will mainly just slow down the rate at which expenses grow, rather than suddenly making game development much cheaper.

These trends lead Shawn Layden to imagine a future where making games will look a lot more like making movies. In that setup, studios would keep only a small core team on staff, mainly handling pre-production.

Once pre-production wraps up, external teams would be brought in to actually build the different parts of the game according to that vision. By doing this, studios could save a lot, since in traditional development there are often periods when some departments aren’t needed at all, making it hard for publishers to justify keeping those staff employed full-time. Layden thinks this shift in how games are made is already happening, and we’re currently somewhere in the middle of that transition.

1. PlayStation - official website

• AI / Artificial Intelligence
• Shawn Layden