Three former console leaders from Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox/Sega agreed that the games industry has become overly focused on efficiency, consolidation, and financial metrics. They think its future depends on empowering developers to create weird and risky original games.

We had a great time at GamesBeat Next 2026 opening our event with a game legends panel: Doug Bowser, former president of Nintendo of America; Peter Moore, former leader at Xbox, Sega and Electronic Arts; and Shawn Layden, former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios. I served as the moderator.

This panel was modeled on a session I saw 25 years ago at an E3 conference, in 2001, as a relatively fresh full-time reporter on games. I watched the E3 panel that, for the first and only time, brought together the top current leaders of the Xbox, Sony and Nintendo. They kind of insulted each other, and then they never did it again.

In our opening session at the event, all three leaders said they believe the industry’s creative risk-taking has fallen dramatically. To be clear, they were not insulting the current management of their own companies with this criticism. Their words targeted the entire industry.

They feel major publishers have become too focused on efficiency, scale, and predictable returns.

Layden argued that consolidation is producing companies that are “too big to fail” and increasingly unwilling to innovate. Bowser agreed that fewer titles now carry greater financial pressure, reducing experimentation. Moore lamented that many unconventional games — like Sega’s Seaman — that once launched on systems like Dreamcast would never get approved today.

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