“You Can’t Be Both,” Former PlayStation Boss Warns Xbox to Choose Between Being the World’s Biggest Publisher or a Traditional Platform Owner

Some industry observers believe Xbox’s ambitious acquisition spree has backfired, with massive investments yielding disappointing returns and no profits in sight, leaving its budget stretched thin across publishing, studios, services, and console hardware.

As Microsoft’s gaming division undergoes a major restructuring, some argue that the company needs to commit to a single strategy.

Shawn Layden Thinks that XBOX Should Decide Between Being a Publisher or a Platform

Former PlayStation chief Shawn Layden has weighed in on Xbox’s current turmoil, stating that the company must choose between two divergent business models, as market conditions simply do not allow it to pursue both simultaneously.

In a recent interview with Eurogamer, Layden, who led PlayStation during the PS4’s heyday, addressed Xbox’s current predicament, pointing to a lack of clear direction as the root cause of its struggles.

According to him, Xbox possesses the assets to become a dominant multiplatform publisher, yet it remains tethered to a console-based ecosystem that demands a very different approach.

“There’s two roads,” Layden explained. “To be a competitive platform rival in the marketplace with PlayStation, or the biggest game publisher in the world, which based on all their acquisitions, they’re either there or they’re very close to it.

But those two roads do not converge. Those two roads necessarily diverge, because to be a platform and to be a very well-supported, well-accepted, well-selling platform, you need exclusive content. Nintendo needs its Mario and its Zelda, and PlayStation needs Crash Bandicoot and Astro Bot, and Kratos and Horizon, all of that. But if you’re going to be the biggest publisher in the world, which is not a bad ambition - I’m sure there’s gold on them there hills - you have to bring your stuff on every platform. Multi-platform is almost a prerequisite."

Former PlayStation Executive Sees Little Future in Traditional Platform Model, Believes Xbox Would Thrive as a Publisher

The former PlayStation executive further questioned the viability of Xbox’s platform strategy, noting that exclusives alone are not particularly profitable, and that a healthy hardware business depends heavily on third-party software sales to generate sustainable revenue.

“When I was running PlayStation Studios, even in our biggest year, we never got over maybe 22 percent market share,” Shawn Layden explained. “Easily 80 percent of the business was being delivered by Electronic Arts, Ubisoft, Activision, Take-Two, Bandai Namco, Sega. That’s their opportunity.

As a first-party platform, our job was almost not to be the biggest game publisher in the world. In fact, it was against our interest to start muscling our partners out of the pie. We weren’t there to steal; I wasn’t making games so I could steal market share from EA or steal market share from Activision. My job was to make games that made the pie bigger, and my opportunity was in growing it out."

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