Former PlayStation Executive Believes Non-Gaming Tech Companies are “Barbarians at the Gates”
gamingbolt.comShawn Layden, formerly an executive at PlayStation, has referred to non-gaming tech-based companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon and Apple as “barbarians at the gate” at the recent GamesIndustry.biz Investment Summit. Referring to the tech companies as non-endemic to the games industry, Layden calls these companies one of the biggest threats to the video games business.
“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’. And so we have Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon wanting to get piece and trying to disrupt our industry,” said Layden.
It is important to note that Layden is specifically speaking about the business side of the games industry, rather than the artistic side. The “disuption” mentioned by Layden refers more to new ways of making and selling games rather than any fundamental changes to gaming itself.
“I’m hoping gaming will be the first industry where we disrupt ourselves,” he continued. “Where it doesn’t take a Google or an Amazon to completely flip the table. We should be smart enough to see these changes coming and prepare ourselves for that eventuality.”
Interestingly, all of the companies mentioned by Layden have thrown their hat in the gaming business in some form or another, with varying degrees of success. While both Google and Apple are predominantly focused on mobile gaming, both companies have tried to break into console/PC gaming at some point—Google with its now-defunct Stadia service and Apple with its ill-fated 1996 console, the Pippin.
Amazon is trying its own hand at the gaming business with the release of various games that it is either developing in-house, like New World, or publishing like Lost Ark. The company
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