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

[DonFerrari]

EricHiggin said:

DonFerrari said:

Would seem strange since from what have been said Shawn was above Jim. But if it is as you say then you can consider me pissed with how things may go in the future.

So with the recent cross play news, Shawn sacrificed himself 4 the players ability to "play together", perhaps?

Wouldn't make much sense =] for me it seems more like Shawn was hoarding power and putting his policies in place, to the point Japan got pissed and tossed him out, now we are seeing changes, perhaps b PS5 censoring will be gone as well.

VideoGameAccountant said:

Torillian said:

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:

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. 

And we have seen plenty of gender/race swap in entertainment that got not only bashed but sales lost (and when this happened the company and progressives accused the fanbase of being toxic and bigoted, because they themselves wouldn't buy the product anyway they just wanted it changed).

thismeintiel said:

EricHiggin said:

So with the recent cross play news, Shawn sacrificed himself 4 the players ability to "play together", perhaps?

More like shikamaru317 has it backwards.  If there was a power struggle, the guy who gets ousted doesn't have his policies all of a sudden put in place.

VideoGameAccountant said:

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. 

Sometimes it is over applied.  I mean sometimes it does happen where the offender goes broke.  Like a comic store that refused to let a right-leaning customer shop there anymore, they eventually closed down because all the right-leaning customers, and those of other political beliefs who thought it was wrong, stopped going there.  And really a lot of comics are getting cancelled as the industry seems to be trying to get woke.  Of course, in most cases it's more "get woke, then underperform," especially for larger brands that decide to go down that path.  Gilette has seen sales drop thanks to their woke ads.  Battlefield V saw much lower sales than the previous game, and many of the sales they did get came thanks to a steep price cut shortly after its release.  Mass Effect Andromeda hired much of its staff based on diversity instead of skill/experience, and the game performed poorly both gameplay-wise, with many glitches and wonky animations, and sales-wise.  TLJ greatly underperformed to analysts expectations, $1.33B vs $1.8B+ and a big drop in merch sales.

Yes seems like he got it backward.