Former CEO of PlayStation: PS5 game development costs may reach $200 million

In a recent interview with Bloomberg, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden predicted that PS5 game development costs may reach $200 million. The former executive who left PlayStation in October 2019 said that the cost of game development will basically increase exponentially with each generation of platform updates.

Shawn Layden said that when he was still at PlayStation, his budget for recent big PlayStation 4 titles was $100 million, and he predicted that the cost of each PS5 game would double to $200 million. Large game companies will try to reduce costs by adopting a “de-risk” strategy, and this approach will also make developers more inclined to launch sequels later.

When asked about his views on publishers chasing the same trend, Shawn Layden thought, “What happens there is you end up with 3-4 silos of games or game types that continue to exist, and variety is squeezed out.”