This is why I make long posts. It lends to somewhat avoiding pointless back and forths over the obvious.
That was one project! It was also from the righteously now shuttered/reformed Japan Studio. Not from say Naughty Dog, who released 7 games over the course of the PS3 and the PS4; and who will now be releasing just a single title throughout the 8 year lifespan of the PS5 and the Pro. Remasters of backwards compatible games do not count.
Obviously Layden and Yoshida weren't perfect, but Hulst has taken PS, made it unproductive by way of PC porting (which I understand Layden was also in favor of), remaster spamming, and a live service push that nobody wanted. He has also not done anything to prevent a string of disappointing sequels to all-time greats. He's not applying pressure on these studios the same way Shuhei did.
The next head of PS has to have the following:
- High standards of exemplary AAA games from the premier studios and the will to enforce them
- An understanding that none of these studios should be committing to multiplayer projects
- A focus on cutting edge tech, gameplay, and premises/characters that will be appealing as opposed to odious tripe that is obviously, clearly not
Lisan Al-Games, if you will.
Layden never has been the head of WWS/PS Studios or SCE/SIE.
He was the host of E3 because he was in charge of the sales & marketing subsidiary (not game development) for America, SCEA. Before getting fired, during a short period he was chairman of PS Studios (back then WWS) while Shuhei Yoshida was in charge of it as president and head.
In 2019 Yoshida decided to move to PlayStation Indies and Hermen replaced him. In the 'Yoshida as SCE WWS president' era (2008-2019) there were many beloved and big seller games, but also a lot of turds nobody remembers or ever heard about them, money pit projects, games that tanked or got cancelled and studios closed.
Some of them started in the Yoshida era and got cancelled or released and tanked in the Hulst era, as is the case of Destruction AllStars, Concord, TLOU Online, London Studio's new IP, Pixel Opus last cancelled game, or the mobile games that Japan Studio was developing until Hermen cancelled them and greenlighted Astro Bot for them (the woman in charge of them got fired and later hired by MS).
Because remember, the GaaS and PC strategy did start when Yoshida and Shawn Layden were in PS Studios, it wasn't an idea of Jim Ryan or Hermen Hulst.
Hermen highly increased the manpower of their existing teams more than doubling their size, expanding several of them from being able to work in a single game at the same time to work up to 3-4 games at the same time while also overviewing extrernally developed PC ports or remasters/remakes (some of which like TLOUP1 started under Yoshida).
He also acquired different support teams like Nixxes or Bluepoint to further support them. He also acquired multiple lead dev teams more like Bungie or Housemarque. He did put some order in teams like Bungie and Japan Studio, and both had a super successful 2024 release (and branched out the Japanese XDEV team to give them their own office, as previously was made with the EU and US XDEV teams).
Since some years ago, he has over two dozen first party games under development at the same time, more than ever. This generation, under his command, they also invested more in 2nd party games for this generation than for any generation before.
His games won like over 200 awards last year and was the company with more awarded games of the year, as other years before. Like almost all the years he's been in charge, released another game that broke their launch sales record. He did cut the fat when needed.
He's the most successful PS Studios head ever, this is why they promoted him to CEO of half of SIE last year.
