Former PlayStation Boss Believes Exclusivity Has Become AAA Development’s “Achilles’ Heel” Due to Ballooning Budgets

gamingbolt.com:

Exclusivity has become much less hard-and-fast than it was for so long in the games industry, to the extent that even first parties are now beginning to explore multiplatform releases. PlayStation games routinely show up on PC, and Xbox accelerated its multiplatform efforts with both PS5 and Switch releases with the likes of Sea of Thieves, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Grounded.

Of course, given the staggering degree to which video game development costs have ballooned by this point, it’s no surprise that companies are trying to find more ways to sell more copies of games that are becoming increasingly more expensive to make. In fact, according to Shawn Layden – former CEO of Sony Worldwide Studios, who left PlayStation in 2019 – we’ve gotten to the point where, thanks to the aforementioned budgets, exclusivity has become AAA development’s “achilles’ heel.”

“When your costs for a game exceed $200 million, exclusivity is your Achilles’ heel. It reduces your addressable market,” Layden said in a recent interview with GamesBeat. “Particularly when you’re in the world of live service gaming or free-to-play. Another platform is just another way of opening the funnel, getting more people in. In a free-to-play world, as we know, 95% percent of those people will never spend a nickel. The business is all about conversion. You have to improve your odds by cracking the funnel open. Helldivers 2 has shown that for PlayStation, coming out on PC at the same time. Again, you get that funnel wider. You get more people in.”

Layden went on to add that though the situation isn’t exactly the same with single-player titles, multiplatform releases are still beginning to look attractive, even if the sales boost they provide might seem like a minimal one at glance. According to Layden, that comes down to the fact that the console market hasn’t really rgrown in three decades.

“For single-player games it’s not the same exigency,” he said. “But if you’re spending $250 million, you want to be