Former PlayStation boss says exploding AAA budgets squeeze out creativity as the 'finance guys' hunt for their own GTA and find a 'lot of copycats, a lot of sequels'

High AAA game development costs are stifling creativity and leading to a lack of risk-taking, resulting in numerous sequels and less innovation, according to former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden. He contrasts this with the indie scene's higher risk tolerance and the impact of live-service games on sales of new releases.

PlayStation's former boss thinks that ballooning development budgets are "squeezing" the creative juices out of AAA game development. 

Shawn Layden is no stranger to huge game budgets, having served as a senior executive at the console maker for years. Poorly redacted legal documents previously revealed that blockbuster games he'd been involved with, including The Last of Us Part 2 and Horizon Forbidden West, had budgets exceeding $200 million, but Layden now feels those huge price tags are negatively affecting how games are made.

"I guess you get new genre activity at the indies level, where there's more risk tolerance," Layden says in an interview with Eurogamer. "You have got to take the risk, otherwise you're not gonna get anywhere. But I'm afraid that the current cost of game development, with AAA console titles costing in the hundreds of millions, squeezes risk tolerance out of the room."

Layden explains that when a game studio plans to spend $160 million or so on a project, the company's "finance guys" will immediately want another successful game to compare it against. "'What is that comparable to? How are you going to make me feel better? Can you show me how the trend line is going to be exactly like Grand Theft Auto, so then I can feel fine putting money behind it?'" Layden says the risk averse attitude "results in a lot of copycats, a lot of sequels" and mindsets like "'Give me GTA 7, because I know how to plot that course.'" As a result, big budgets are "squeezing, I think, creativity out at the high end and that's a problem." 

Layden also points to the PS1 and PS2 generations where one console owner might buy up to 25 games during those consoles' lifecycles, and compares it to where we are now with millions of people dedicated to a select few never-ending live services. People who log onto Fortnite and Warzone every night are less likely to check out or buy other, newer releases, for example. 

Borderlands 3 and The Elder Scrolls Online’s director recently talked about the same woes, claiming that AAA studios are playing it safe since “you have people who get nervous because big money is involved.”