PlayStation is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and former chief Shawn Layden is looking to the future of the industry and how the console market is nearing its limit.
"I think we're at a point where the console becomes irrelevant in the next... if not the next generation then the next next generation definitely," Layden says in an interview with Eurogamer.
The difference between console generations is getting smaller. Visuals are now 4K instead of 1080p, frame rates are hitting 120 instead of 60, but it's hard to notice these improvements without top-range TVs and speakers. The best improvement I've noticed is loading times, but even they're nearly instant now for most games.
"We're at a point now where the innovation curve on the hardware is starting to plateau, or top out," Layden explains. "At the same time, the commoditization of the silicon means that when you open up an Xbox or PlayStation, it's really pretty much the same chipset. It's all built by AMD. Each company has its own OS and proprietary secret sauce, but in essence [it's the same]. I think we're pretty much close to [the] final spec for what a console could be."
I started gaming on a PS2, but seeing the difference in fidelity and memory between PS1 and PS2 games was astonishing. That generational difference has never been repeated. "You're not going to see another PS1 to PS2 jump in performance - we have sort of maxed out there." Layden says. "If we're talking about teraflops and ray-tracing, we're already off the sheet that most people begin to understand."
Speaking about the other generations, Layden says, "The jump from PS2 to PS3 was also remarkable. We got to an HD standard. We got - not all, but a lot of - 60fps gameplay. It had a network capability, nascent though it was. Then PS3 to PS4 was just, like, getting the network thing done right. Then to PS5, which is a fantastic piece of kit, but the actual difference in performance... we're getting to the realm, frankly, where only dogs can hear the difference now." Layden's gone a long way for someone who entered the industry not knowing anything about making video games.
"The real competition will be on its content," Layden explains. "And content should be the competition for publishers, not which hardware you get behind." Although games take longer to make these days, PlayStation is still my favorite platform for hits.
If you want to take a trip down memory lane and see how far PlayStation has come, you should check out the best PS1 games and best PS5 games.
