The video game industry is huge, but it’s not growing at the pace it needs to. While the industry saw a record boom in gaming engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic, it has now returned to usual levels, four years into the ninth generation of consoles. Why is the games industry not growing? The answer is TikTok, thinks Shawn Layden, former chairman of SIE Worldwide Studios.
Speaking to Eurogamer to celebrate PlayStation’s 30th anniversary, Layden says that the company’s real competition is social media and anything else that attracts attention away from gaming, and not Xbox or Nintendo as gamers would expect.
“Even when you hear that gaming revenue went up 23 percent during the pandemic, it wasn’t from new people, necessarily,” he said.
“It was …