Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden thinks mid-range AA titles are less common due to being stuck in a struggle between being too big for smaller funding but not big enough for the places chasing the next Fortnite.
As of late, PlayStation has been mostly known for its tentpole AAA releases that push the boundaries of graphical fidelity and focus on storytelling, but the first three consoles had Sony throwing anything and everything at the wall to see what would stick. Games like Patapon, LocoRoco, and basically everything else Japan Studio made were part of Sony's identity for the longest time, but unless you can turn LocoRoco into a grizzly third-person shooter about a sad dad, it's probably not coming back.
In fact, a lot of major publishers have stepped away from these smaller 'double A' releases in recent years, with big massive titles that are designed to be played forever (until they underperform and get slated to shut down in a few months like XDefiant) becoming the norm. Japan Studio was shut down by Sony, and since then we've only really had Astro Bot to fill the void of games outside its norm. But I'm not the only one who misses AA games.
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has previously talked about his concern over ballooning AAA game budgets while questioning what it would take for the AA to come back. In a recent podcast appearance on PlayerDriven, Layden spoke more about his feelings on the industry, saying that indie games that are fighting on their own or massive AAA games with hundreds of millions on the line are trying to get a cut of that Fortnite money, but the mid-range game is disappearing. Layden said, "No one funds the $8M game. It's too big for angels and too small for VCs."
Layden worked at Sony from the beginnings of the PS1, eventually becoming the president of Sony's gaming division. He was around for all of the massive innovations that built Sony up to be a juggernaut. He later stepped down in 2019, and two years later, in 2021, Sony shut down Japan Studio, effectively putting an end to the publisher's AA game output.
Shawn Layden recently said that establishing the PlayStation Productions studio was one of the greatest things he did in his career.
