Shawn Layden, former president of Sony Interactive Entertainment, called corporations that want to enter the video game market “barbarians”. In his opinion, they pose a huge threat to the industry.
“Right now we’re seeing all the big companies saying, ‘Oh, games? Do they bring in billions of dollars a year? I want a piece of this business.” And now we have Google, Netflix, Apple and Amazon, who want to grab their piece and try to destroy our industry,” Leiden said at the investment summit GamesIndustry.biz .
Leiden pointed out that similar companies have irreversibly changed other industries. As an example, he cited Apple, which “convinced everyone that 99 cents per song is a good idea” and destroyed the music industry. In a similar way, according to Leiden, Netflix did. He hurt the movie business by luring people from cinemas to streaming services.