Speaking with
Bloomberg, he noted that costs “seem to double” each generation, with some of Sony’s major first-party titles costing up to $100 million on the PlayStation 4. “If we can't stop the cost curve from going up, all we can do is try to de-risk it,” he explained. “That puts you in a place where you're incentivised toward sequels.”
PlayStation’s always mixed sequels with new intellectual property, but as Layden points out, it’s going to get harder to justify those kind of decisions. “What happens is you end up with 3-4 silos of games or game types that continue to exist, and variety is squeezed out,” he explained, also pointing to how publishers are chasing the next billion dollar phenomenon, like
Minecraft and
Fortnite.