PlayStation's ex-boss Shawn Layden thinks generative AI's impact on the gaming industry is being largely overestimated, and the burgeoning tech won't lead to massive cost reductions like some CEOs are drooling for.
"I see a lot of estimation or prognostication about how AI is going to revolutionize gaming, from mostly people who are not in gaming, saying that 'I think there are ways that it helps accelerate certain functions'," Layden told gamesindustry.biz in a recent interview.
He instead views AI through the same lens that accountants might've viewed Excel when it was new: "I see the impact of AI on gaming as the impact of Excel on certified public accountants." He explains that "it was better to have a macro and do your sums that way rather than on an adding machine," but accountants "still had to have enough knowledge to realize" whether the sums were correct and how to interpret the numbers thereafter.
On a semi-related note, Layden also mentioned that outsourced development, something used by lots of game companies to also reduce costs, has improved over the generations.
"Sometimes in the early days it would have been cheaper to do it ourselves instead of having it redone nine times because we just couldn't get a meeting of the minds with the outsourcing company overseas and the developers here," he explained. Now? "The connection between core development teams and engineering resources in Taiwan or art resources in Malaysia, I think those are getting better optimized all the time."
Still, he's "not sure" that AI and better outsourced talent "will actually create the deceleration of cost."
Ex PlayStation boss says "we've plateaued" on gaming tech, so hardware companies could at the very least make it all "cheaper and simpler"
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