Former PlayStation Boss Shawn Layden Talks About PlayStation Turning Devs Into Rock Stars
Former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden has revealed that, in the early days of PlayStation, Sony’s marketing team sought to promote game developers in the same way the music industry platformed rock bands. Over the years, PlayStation has continued to leverage the popularity of its developers to market games, with big studios like Insomniac and Naughty Dog practically becoming household names.
While developers have always been at the heart and soul of great games, they weren’t always given the spotlight. In 2025, it’s fairly common for the average gamer to know which developers are behind their favorite titles. Some of this is due to the extensive media coverage games receive today, and some of it is also due to brand recognition. Sony has spent a lot of time cultivating PlayStation exclusive titles, and there’s a certain level of expectation that comes with these games.
PlayStation has built its current reputation by producing many narrative-heavy single-player action-adventure titles like God of War, Ghost of Yotei, and Uncharted. However, while all of these titles exist under the PlayStation umbrella, the developers themselves have also received a lot of attention. It’s hard to imagine what the audience reaction would be like if PlayStation suddenly announced that the next Marvel’s Spider-Man title was going to be developed by a company other than Insomniac. From what Shawn Layden has revealed, this is all by design.
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Shawn Layden Says Sony Marketed Game Developers Like Rock Bands
In a recent appearance on Game Rant’s Character Select, former PlayStation boss Shawn Layden reflected on the early days of PlayStation and how Sony approached the gaming industry. Layden revealed that a large portion of the original PlayStation team was made up of people who had migrated from the music industry, which came with its own marketing strategies at the time. When talking about the industry and PlayStation’s strategy, Layden said, “Game advertising at that time was very typical. Here’s a bit of the gameplay, you know, here’s how it costs, and here’s some happy kid with a controller playing the game.” Anyone familiar with the early days of gaming will likely remember such commercials or magazine advertisements. While this was the trend at the time, people who had migrated from Sony’s music business to the gaming industry had their own ideas.
When discussing how Sony’s music experts wanted to approach selling games, Layden said, “They wanted to market the platform, and market the developers and the games as you would a rock band.” According to Layden, this was an attempt to make the consumer care more about the actual creatives behind the games. With this strategy, the team felt they could make players care more about the developers themselves, their vision, and their future projects. Layden went on to say, “These weren’t PlayStation games per se, but these were Naughty Dog games, these were Bandai games, these were Koei games.” When talking about individual developers who have actually risen to the status of a rock star, Layden said, “We’re looking at you, Kojima-San.”
Hideo Kojima has become a massive name in entertainment, but especially in the world of gaming. After spending years building the Metal Gear franchise, Kojima left Konami and launched Kojima Productions. The company’s first game was Death Stranding, a new property that has since received a sequel and has multiple adaptations in the works. PlayStation’s original strategy to turn developers into rock stars seems to have been a big success, as plenty of developers have leveraged the attention and publicity they’ve received to continue creating titles that exemplify their unique vision. With so many talented developers working in the industry today, it seems as if gamers have a lot to look forward to in the future.