Xbox’s Recent Moves Demonstrate A ‘Basic Misunderstanding’ Of The Industry, Former Sony Gaming Boss Says

The former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America and chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios, Shawn Layden, has shared a few thoughts on the current situation at Xbox, saying a series of decisions including a CEO changeover, a weak rebrand, a spate of new tech industry hires, and the potential closure of several of its game studios represent “a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves.”

Layden was speaking in a LinkedIn comment in response to a post by game consultant Tadhg Kelly, who outlined a bulleted list of recent Xbox moves that he referred to as part of an “identity crisis” for the company, with some of the bullet points seeming to be paraphrases of actual quotes. Specifically, Kelly listed [links added by Kotaku to provide context]:

• A new CEO after previous leadership was beheaded
• A rebrand that was kinda just the old brand
• A reaffirmation of expensive Helix
• A claim that hardware can’t be expensive to win
• A claim that 30% margin is done
• A claim that 3% margin is trouble
• Matthew Ball and some new tech-industry hires
• A claim about refocusing on core franchises
• A showcase of new games
• A killing of studios making those new games
• A claim that gaming is important to Microsoft
• A comment that gaming at Microsoft needs to stand alone

In response, Layden commented, “At the risk of sounding like a ‘hater’ (which, I’m really not) the moves evince a basic misunderstanding of how the interactive entertainment world moves. Iykyk, which also means if you don’t you don’t.”

In another comment below the news that Xbox was planning to close Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and Compulsion Games, Layden wrote, “I think the SpaceX euphemism may apply here: ‘Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly’. The last couple weeks have been a real roller coaster. Feel bad for the dev teams. 🎮💪🏼💙”

Layden oversaw the lead-up to the launch of the PS5, which has since sold over 93 million units, and orchestrated the acquisition of Insomniac Games just before he stepped down from his leadership role. In the years since, Layden has criticized industry consolidation, saying in 2023:

My concern around consolidation is that often it impacts creativity. For instance, it takes some kind of small, independent, wildhorse studios and brings them into a larger conglomerate and essentially time slows down the bigger you are, time slows down. I’m also concerned when studios get bought and instead of enabling a way to create their game, they maybe get absorbed into a larger enterprise that’s making a larger game, you know, how many studios are involved in making blockbuster games that will stagger the mind.

…I’m just concerned about what it does to the creativity urge inside of the studios, and can they keep that sort of independent creativity alive or do they just get absorbed into the larger whole? Time will tell, but it’s a bit concerning. When you go from hundreds of voices to dozens of voices, you lose some voices.