Shawn Layden, Head Of PlayStation’s Game Studios, Departs

[VideoGameAccountant]

Torillian said:

VideoGameAccountant said:

It seems like there is a bit of culture shock within the company for sure. I think it was clear to most people what was going on when Sony was censoring Japanese titles after moving to progressive California. Now it seems there is a clear power struggle within the company. I think this is the same cancer that is going on within Hollywood right now which ultimately lead to Video Games over taking movies (as they never embraced the cancer). Think could spell long term pain for Sony. I'm sure by now everyone has heard "Get Woke Go Broke." While it may be overused and it's application wrongly applied at times, it has definitely had an effect in entertainment. You can see this with Starwars and Battlefield. The video game market doesn't like the Californication of entertainment. 

Console generations are resets. Success last time doesn't spell success the next time (often it's the opposite). Sony can't rely on its massive user base with PS4 to carry them with PS5. If Sony embraces some of these ideas that have hurt other games and movies, I can't see PS5 being a success. The silver lining is Sony is a Japanese company and they may not take kindly to the California branch if they under perform in their strongest segment. 

I would be curious to see any usage of the phrase "Get Woke Go Broke" that I'd agree with. Seems like something youtube reactionaries say for anything that has women or minorities in it when they deem it shouldn't. 

You can disagree with it but I'm using it as it's a term everyone is familiar with. It's clear the the market rejects these types of games (again, see Battlefield). The inclusion of women and minorities often feels hamfisted and not genuine. Like it's done to make a political statement rather than being relevant to the game. In Battlefield's case, it was putting these things into a World War 2 games where fans felt they didn't belong. You may not like the term but its said because it describes a real world effect even if sometime it's over applied. 

shikamaru317 said:

DonFerrari said:

Well if he was responsible for the censoring then off he go and perhaps Sony reverses it.

I believe the insinuation is that Jim Ryan was in charge of the censoring initiative, and that Shawn Layden was fighting against it the past 2 years, among other thing. Sadly it appears that Shawn Layden lost that battle. I also hear that Shawn Layden was the one who fought for crossplay with other consoles, while Jim Ryan was against the idea, and that Jim Ryan is very pro-cloud for Sony moving forward, while Shawn likes traditional hardware more. 

I don't know exactly who was trying to do what to be honest. Maybe Shawn Layden was the hero who wanted to make sure we have big boobies in our goofy Japanese titles. I will add that (as someone else pointed out) is how little fanfare this had. It was just a tweet and he's out. Compare that to Reggie who had a who video about his time working at Nintendo and he announced it well in advance. It seems to speak to the power struggle going on in the company.