Shawn Layden of Sony gives an inspiring talk at the DICE Summit 2019.
Shawn Layden of Sony gives an inspiring talk at the DICE Summit 2019.
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The DeanBeat: DICE Summit shows the inspirational highs and depressing lows of gaming

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 7 min

Shawn Layden led off this week’s DICE Summit with an inspirational speech about the need to focus on quality games, the rise of accessibility for all players, and a celebration of the diverse teams making video games.

Layden is in charge of 13 studios that Sony owns, and he has to greenlight games that are very risky but potentially deliver huge rewards, like Sony’s stand-out hits of 2018, God of War and Marvel’s Spider-Man. Sony’s studios lead the way at what Layden referred to as the industry’s inflection point, where games are “shedding their youth” and becoming a cultural lodestone.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.