For studio leaders and investors: Richard Browne, formerly of Universal Interactive, THQ and Digital Extremes, on why the AAA model has stopped working.
Richard has spent 38 years in the video game business. He ran production at Universal Interactive, ran external development at THQ for the best part of a decade, and set up the publishing operation for Digital Extremes alongside Warframe. Now he advises studios on funding and survival.
In this conversation:
- Why you cannot spend $300 million and five years on a new IP, and the case for a $10 to $20 million beachhead and a ten-year, three-game plan
- Why he calls Game Pass "cancer" for the business
- How his kids play differently, Roblox as the modern playground, and why photorealism stopped growing the market
- The Championship Manager origin story, the 35 games he has shut down, and the Concord post-mortem
CHAPTERS
0:00 Cold open: "It's in dire straits"
0:30 38 years in: from the BBC Micro to consulting the industry
1:33 Why the market is in dire straits, and the COVID live-service hangover
2:53 "Dad's IP": why kids won't touch Star Wars, Doom or Gears
5:32 The broken maths of AAA, and the $10–20M beachhead
5:58 The ten-year, three-game plan every IP needs
8:23 Why a 15-hour game is enough, and the GameStop trap
9:39 What he plays, and how his kids play completely differently
11:50 Coding at home again: AI, Steam and where Minecraft came from
13:11 Roblox as the modern playground, and the Payday conversion problem
16:11 Why photorealism stopped growing the market
18:24 The Microsoft mess and the Gears exclusivity mistake
26:04 Nintendo and the power of generational IP
27:47 Do we even need a PS6? The end of the visual arms race
29:08 What investors want now, and why it doesn't build games that last
30:50 The Championship Manager origin story
33:16 Low risk, high reward: Crash, Among Us, and community first
37:01 Killing games: Concord, ego, and the 35 he shut down
38:24 Character vs world: The Last of Us and the God of War pivot
43:11 "I think it's cancer": the case against Game Pass
51:54 Netflix games, streaming latency, and what actually works
56:28 Why Xbox can't build a studio system you can't live without
59:30 How US studios survive now: small core, global outsourcing
1:03:38 GTA 6's blast radius, what he's hyped for, and the takeaway
Guest: Richard Browne
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brownerichard/
Purpose Made Podcast, hosted by Pete Bell
https://purposemadepodcast.co.uk/
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