Shawn Layden Says ‘There Is Huge Value’ For Platform Companies Like Sony & Nintendo To Have ‘Strong Exclusives’

Shawn Layden, former Chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, has revealed on an episode of Pause for Thought that he believes platform exclusive aren’t going away, noting there is “huge value” for major gaming companies such as Sony and Nintendo to support them.

That’s not to says he thinks that there should be an influx of exclusive titles, certain IPs such as Mario and Uncharted were name-dropped by the former PlayStation executive for making their respective platforms “sing.”

I don’t think every game has to be console exclusive. I don’t think every game should be console-exclusive, but I do accept the fact that if you’re going to have platform companies, like Sony and PlayStation, there is huge value to the brand in having strong exclusives. If Mario starts appearing on PlayStation, that’s the apocalypse, and the same goes for Nathan Drake and Uncharted. They make the platforms sing. If you had to by a Sony CD player to listen to Sony music, that would be crazy. But you do need to buy a PlayStation to buy a Sony game.

I think we need to get into a world where we have a gaming format, and maybe it just comes from PC. Then, we have a consortium around that, we have licensing programs which allow other manufacturers to build into that space, and then you can talk about real numbers moving. That’s how you get to the ubiquity of the toaster.

Layden was interviewed by GamesIndustry.biz last August, where he touched base on a number of topics including the fact he feels hardware companies have plateaued on tech. “Make it cheaper and simpler,” suggested Layden. Beyond that, he also revealed that he gets flashbacks to the Dreamcast era when observing what Microsoft is currently doing with the Xbox.

[Source – Pause For Thought via Reddit]