There are many “crises of faith” in the gaming industry right now, and some of them speak to an overall problem of what’s happening in the gaming space today. We had the Xbox layoffs, which were a clear sign of greed and a lack of caring about the developers who work hard to make video games. Then, there’s the overall problem of gaming costs. It’s a classic topic that brings a lot of people together to talk about their views on it. That includes the former head of PlayStation Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, who was more than happy to put his two cents on the situation.
He was on the Kit and Krysta podcast and cited how the “feeling” of making a bigger game was soon outweighed by the higher costs of making massive AAA titles, especially by the time the PS4 and PS5 eras arrived:
“It may be counter-intuitive but, you know, if we spent enough money to make the big game you know the chance of success felt increased because everybody wanted to play bigger games, more beautiful graphics and more realistic-looking characters, more gameplay hours.”
Except that wasn’t exactly true. Gamers didn’t mind bigger titles, but they wanted to be sure that the titles they got were meaningful and fun and didn’t feel like a step down from what came before, especially if said game was from a big franchise.
The problem, though, was that with recent console generation jumps, the improvements weren’t as great as you might think. Shuhei Yoshida noted that while the costs of games skyrocketed, the actual technology within the consoles only offered a small improvement overall.
“I saw some analysis or estimate of one same franchise released during PS4 era and PS5 era generation double the budget. And that has reached the point that we cannot recoup this investment.”
That is a problem, but it also speaks to how too many AAA developers, and not just Sony, feel that “massive games are the only way to go” when recent events prove otherwise. If you put in the effort to make those massive games matter, then they sell well, as Nintendo proved over the Nintendo Switch era, and that console didn’t have “hyper-realistic graphics” to anchor it. Or, you can look at the recent debut title from Sandfall Interactive, which had a compelling look, gameplay, and story, but was less than 30 hours long, and it’s a GOTY contender.
The future of gaming will be rooted in which developers are willing to “alter their mindsets” on what must happen versus what they feel will “sell lots of units.”
