On September 20th, a piece of personnel news from Tencent stirred the pool in the game circle.

Shawn Layden, former chairman of Sony Group Corp Mutual Entertainment Global Studio, posted a message on LinkedIn that he had joined Tencent Games as a strategic consultant. In the future, he will provide advice, help and support to Tencent's game team in his new position.

Since leaving SIE in October 2019. Shawn Layden has been active in social networks and media interviews, but domestic players are generally unfamiliar with him. What on earth can this boss with a high title be able to bear?

What kind of hero is the boss?

Shawn Layden joined Sony Group Corp in 1987. he initially worked in the corporate communications department and worked as a communications assistant under Sony Group Corp co-founder Morita Akio for several years. Later, after the establishment of Sony Group Corp computer Entertainment Company (SCE) in 1993, he joined the SCE business line.

As a subsidiary of Sony Group Corp, SCE is mainly responsible for the development, manufacture and sales of PlayStation game consoles. At the same time, he is also responsible for providing the first-party game content for Sony Group Corp. It manages the famous Santa Monica Studio and Tokyo Studio.

The former produced Sony Group Corp's absolute ace "God of War" series, while the latter produced a wide range of games with different styles, such as "Wanda and the Colossus", "the Last Guardian" and "Gravity Vertigo". At the same time, Tokyo Studio also acts as a publisher and supports external teams, leading the development of games such as Blood Curse, the Soul of the Devil and the Tale of the White Knight.

In the early days of SCE, Shawn was mainly responsible for managing international software development in a studio in London. It is worth mentioning that the London studio is currently responsible for the development of VR games, and the widely acclaimed PSVR game "Blood&Truth" is their work.

During his nearly 17 years of service with SCE, Shawn has been promoted from vice president of European companies to president of SCE. Accumulated rich experience in the whole process management of hardware research, production and marketing, and led the construction of Sony Group Corp content ecology based on 3A games.

Shawn, which performed well in SCE, was entrusted with the important task in 2010 to lead the establishment of Sony Group Corp online Entertainment International (SNEI) as Executive Vice President and Chief operating Officer of SNEI, mainly responsible for leading Sony Group Corp's high-end entertainment service brand PlayStation Network to develop its business.

Six years later, significant organizational changes have taken place in the two companies that Shawn has been deeply responsible for. Sony Group Corp announced the merger of all their business lines, including software and hardware, as well as network services. Sony Group Corp Interactive Entertainment Company (SIE), as we are familiar with, was born, but the influence and decision-making power of Shawn within Sony Group Corp seems to have weakened.

By 2018, Shawn's role has changed to focus on SIE global studios, focusing on the management and control of Sony Group Corp's first-party content. During this period, the most famous event was the acquisition of Insomniac Studio, which included Spider-Man under the command of Sony Group Corp after the successful launch of Spider-Man by Insomniac Studio, which not only further enriched Sony Group Corp's content strength, but also blocked arch-rival Microsoft Corp's absorption of high-quality content teams.

However, just a month after the completion of the acquisition, Shawn unexpectedly resigned as CEO of SIE Global Studios for unknown reasons. It is rumored that his departure was related to Sony Group Corp's internal power struggle, and he was defeated in the competition with Jim Ryan, the then chief executive of Sony Group Corp Interactive Entertainment.

No matter what the reason is, as a veteran of Sony Group Corp, Shawn, his career almost runs through the development of Sony Group Corp games. There is no doubt about the network and influence of strategic vision, management ability, industry resources, especially 3A development team. Presumably these are also the places that Tencent values him most.

Big factories are crazy to recruit people.

In fact, recruiting Shawn Layden is not the only intersection between Tencent and Sony Group Corp recently.

Just earlier this month, Tencent and Sony Group Corp bought a total of 30 per cent of FromSoftwar Studio, with Tencent becoming its second largest shareholder. FromSoftwar Studios, led by well-known producer Hideki Miyazaki, has become the hottest 3A game team after successively launching highly stylized soul series games such as Dark Soul 3, Wolf: the second Life of Shadow, and Elden Ring. Total global sales of the Dark Soul series exceeded 31 million by the end of 2021, according to official data.

In his early years, Miyazaki had a long history with Sony Group Corp SCE, and the aforementioned works such as the Curse of consanguinity have received great help from SCE. From this, we can also see the interpersonal origin in Japan's 3A game circle, and the accession of Shawn Layden is bound to play an important role only in terms of industry resources.

Once there is again and again, there will be again and again. Some time ago, some foreign game bloggers revealed on social media that Tencent was negotiating with Sony Group Corp Group on the acquisition of SIE. Tencent plans to buy a 90 per cent stake in SIE for $90 billion, including the ownership of Sony Group Corp Mutual and its first-party game studio, as well as the Play Station platform. The amount of the deal exceeds Microsoft Corp's previous acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $70 billion. If the deal goes through, it will be the biggest acquisition in the gaming industry.

However, the rumor was quickly refuted, but the reason why the rumor was able to gain the trust of the market so easily had something to do with Tencent's image of being keen on foreign investment. Its thirst for high-quality content has long been well known, and since 2016, it has accelerated investment in well-known CP around the world.

But why doesn't Tencent do the console games himself? Many players think that Tencent will only rely on krypton gold games to negotiate bad money, and does not have the ability to develop 3A by himself, as if the rise of Tencent is the biggest tragedy of the domestic game industry. But they ignore the risks and costs behind a 3A game.

No matter in any period, the cost of research and development and trial and error of console games is very staggering. The discriminant dimension of 3A-level games is to cost A lot of money, A lot of people, and A lot of time. The games we are familiar with often cost hundreds of millions of dollars in capital and several years of time. Even those less well-known games often mean tens of millions of dollars in investment, which will lead to a loss on the project if the sales are not satisfactory.

Spending so much resources on an unguaranteed product is likely to be a glamorous affair. The author believes that Tencent must have considered doing 3A games by himself, but it will definitely not be now, especially when the industry environment is still grim. Through foreign investment to constantly consolidate their advantages in content, as far as possible to smoothly through this period of trough in the industry is the best solution. According to Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage, Tencent, who takes the lead in users and funds, should also export superior funds and users to supplement the relatively inferior R & D capabilities.

At the same time, foreign investment does not mean to completely give up or stop the research and development and accumulation of one's own technology. Tencent's progress in game technology in recent years is obvious to all. Moreover, these invested enterprises are already in the same industry as Tencent and are highly complementary to their domestic business, so they can implement the two routes of "bringing in" and "going out" at the same time.

Taking Tencent's recent increase in Ubisoft as an example, Tencent bought a 49.9 per cent stake in French company Guillemot Brothers Limited for a consideration of about 300m euros. As the family business of Ubisoft founder Guillemot, Guillemot Brothers Limited is the majority shareholder of Ubisoft. Through this acquisition, Tencent's stake in Ubisoft rose to 9.99 per cent from 4.5 per cent previously.

As the leading game developer in France, Yubi has 23 studios and popular IP around the world, such as Assassin Creed and Prince of Persia. Tencent said in an official statement that it will introduce a number of games owned by Ubisoft to the Chinese market and will help Ubisoft transplant its 3A-level game products to mobile through follow-up cooperation to complete the introduction of high-quality content.

At the same time, Ubisoft will also become the main force for Tencent's overseas promotion. Its influence in Germany, France, Britain and other European regions and the appeal of players will become an important supplement to the overseas distribution network of Tencent games, helping Tencent games to better and more accurately complete the promotion and reach users on the sea, and to achieve the go-out of their games.

After the announcement of the investment news, Ubisoft also announced a number of new works of "Assassin's Creed" at a press conference, including the host's next work, "Assassin's Creed: illusion", which is expected to be released next year and is expected to be introduced into China by Tencent. As well as the ARPG mobile game "Assassin's Creed: code name JADE", which is based on the background of ancient China, it is very likely that Tencent will be responsible for the national service agent.

Conclusion

The entry of Shawn Layden is not the starting point of Tencent's overall acceleration of overseas layout, let alone the end. As a global Internet giant, its pace of competing overseas has already taken place, and we can expect to see more Shawn Layden join them in the future.