Eurogamer’s week-long coverage of PlayStation’s 30th anniversary begins today with a very special interview: an extended conversation looking back behind the scenes at PlayStation’s original launch, how the brand became a breakout success despite established competition, its “Icarus moment” in the PS3 era, and then its ongoing battle for industry dominance.
Few saw more of PlayStation’s last 30 years than Shawn Layden, who was already at Sony when the company’s console ambitions were first forming. Over more than three decades, Layden became a pivotal figure within its gaming division, and ultimately served as Sony’s chairman of PlayStation Worldwide Studios.
Layden began his tenure tasked with bringing countless games to PlayStation, and ended it by overseeing the launches of PlayStation’s biggest blockbusters from its own development powerhouses. Now, five years on from his 2019 departure after an astonishing 32 years of service, it was high time for a catch up and look back at everything PlayStation had achieved – and how it all began on a huge gamble.
What’s your first memory of PlayStation? You were already working at Sony at the time, what was your reaction to it? Was the idea of a games console taken seriously?
A ‘fool’s errand’, some of them might have even called it at the time
Layden: When PlayStation launched I was still with corporate, back at Sony headquarters where I’d been since 1987. I was attached to the office of the chairman, Akio Morita, the founder of Sony. I was his assistant, speech writer, ghost writer, interlocutor when I had to be. And we were watching all that from afar, so to speak. But I remember having a presentation early on where they brought the PlayStation prototype to the chairman’s office, and we got to see what they were building. I remember back in mid ’94 before the launch, standing up in a boardroom playing Ridge Racer and going, ‘oh my god, this is going to be fucking amazing’.
But within Sony, I think a lot of the leadership at the time didn’t take it seriously. They thought: ‘Oh my god, Sega and Nintendo own this thing [the console industry]. You think Sony’s going to come in sideways and try to divvy that thing up into a three piece pie?’ It was a ‘fool’s errand’, I think some of them might have even called it at the time. But [then-Sony president Norio] Ohga-san was a believer. A lot of people thought we were taking a risk. It was a fight to get the Sony name onto the machine – they didn’t want to be associated with it.
You moved over to the PlayStation division specifically pretty soon after – how did that happen?
Layden: I joined PlayStation specifically in ’96 when they were a year into it. They’d already launched in North America and in Japan. Sadly, the chairman had suffered a stroke, so that position was no longer required, and the president of PlayStation at the time was a guy named Terry Tokunaka. We’d worked together on the acquisition of Columbia Pictures, so I was kind of a known quantity. After the chairman’s death, Terry asked me ‘what are you going to do now? Why don’t you come and join us in this new company, Sony Computer Entertainment?’ I said, ‘Okay, that’s great. What would I do there?’