PlayStation Isn’t Letting Up On Triple-A Games
Shuhei Yoshida, the President of Sony’s Worldwide Studios for Sony Interactive Entertainment, just spoke to MCV about the state of triple-A game development and the PlayStation’s huge success within this realm of the industry in recent years.
From the development side, Yoshida spoke on the state of the industry and the big risk that comes with triple-A games.
“On one hand, in the triple-A space, the scale and the tech of game development has grown so much that I feel like we are making a huge bet every time we start a new project,” he said. “The end results are, when successfully executed, an amazing fusion of art and tech, providing hours and hours of highly engaging interactive entertainment in a big, often open, world to explore with lifelike characters and imaginative creatures.”
“Because of the size of the investment, each title feels too big to fail,” he continued. “It creates an enormous pressure to manage these triple-A projects. These games are the drivers of the industry to become more and more mainstream entertainment. We need to keep pushing the art of making triple-A games.”
Yoshida also spoke on the gap between narrative-driven single-player games and multiplayer games, which seem almost mutually exclusive in modern gaming.
“It is extremely challenging to create a successful single player game or a successful live multiplayer game these days,” he said. “The art of making each type of game has progressed so much that devs tend to pick and choose where their strength lies and where they should put their focus. It does not help to attach a half-baked online mode to a single player game, or vice versa. I think it is a result of rational thinking on the side of devs and publishers.”