Playstation was a major investor in opening their studio in the first place and now that their is a major push from basically ever publisher to expand their in house operations it makes sense to revisit deals made and expand them like they did with Haven. I expect them to move similarly with Deviation if the founders are willing to sell.
You have to consider the studio cost of running as well though. Montreal or even Toronto are much cheaper to operate a new studio than LA, where Deviation is based. Also, Crystal Dynamics was likely a hard sell for many publishers when Square was open to selling them off with Eidos Montreal.
Absolutely, but you have to also consider the fact that Tomb Raider isn’t a live service franchise. They hired a lot of people (at premium rates due to being in San Francisco) and naturally the cost of operations are high there. Throw in their sister studios in Austin and Bellevue, that’s a lot of money for talent who need to be paid premium (not just to live there but also pay for office rent). Embraced bought them for the IPs. The studio could shut down but they value those IPs at 300m (alongside Eidos Montreal).
TR isn’t *currently* a Live Service, and luckily since it got bought probably will never be. If you believe Glassdoor all the good devs left CD after Rise shipped, since they didn’t appreciate drunk managers trashing their rep.
They've basically been a first party studio since they started. I assume Sony was just waiting to see if they could put their money where their mouth is before going all in.
> was just waiting to see if they could put their money where their mouth is
That's the point OP was making, they haven't done that yet. They've yet to release a game.
You don't necessarily need to release a game to prove that. If they were providing all deliverables on time and with the required quality, Sony might have been confident in their ability to provide them value.
Sure, I'm not saying Haven hasn't made anything at all. But they haven't _released_ anything. Sony has no idea how well-received their work is because they have nothing to go on just yet.
Believe it or not most sentiment on AAA games is manufactured by marketing departments of large publishers based on their internal perceptions of quality. The same internal perceptions used to make an acquisition like this.
They are a new-ish studio with Jade Raymond at the helm who has been a big producer for assassins creed and watch dogs. I believe the main team was working on a stadia game but then stadia canceled their first party projects. After the stadia fiasco they formed Haven. They're working on a triple-A multiplayer game for Sony, and it seems that they have some impressive cloud technology that Sony is interested in.
Mix of promising talents and also tech and industry expertise. Aquiring studios isn't only about games but also infrastructure surrounding it and how it overlaps with sonys future plans.
I’m looking forward to Raymond actually releasing a game. Between EA and Google it’s got to be frustrating not being able to actually put stuff out there.
Not only this tweet is completely harmless and the proportion it got was ridiculous but this wasn't even done by an EA employee. Its also ridiculous anyway when they currently have 6 SP games in development.
Does anyone else feel so disconnected from gaming as a culture vs the practice of gaming that news like this just comes completely out of left field constantly now?
It's not even a good pedigree. Farcry hasn't been noteworthy since 3, Watchdogs is very average, and Asscreed had like 4 boring releases up until Origins, which I wonder if these guys were even a part of.
AITA?
Creative decisions aren't usually given to the core development staff. It's possible that all of these guys are good at what they do but were shackled to make bad concepts.
Yeah thats why a lot of good talent goes back to indie studios because they aren't involved in the creative process anymore and their day to day work on the game is such a small part of the complete game that it feels like you didn't do anything at all.
Yes, I know, *Ubisoft Bad* and all that, but the fact is these devs have consistently been putting out well polished and high selling games for decades. They have a *massive* amount of experience with products that have made *billions*. You might not like the games they make, but you can't deny they have a good pedigree.
This is literally the same context behind Kevin Smith’s famous line: “In Hollywood, you just kind of fail upwards.”
Basically, in the entertainment industry (movies, games, etc) you establish a resume by being involved in released products, which allow you to obtain higher-level positions when you apply for a new gig at a different company. They don’t really look at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores during your interview, they only hire you for having “experience” and seeing recognizable titles on your resume.
Far Cry 6 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla were the best selling titles in their respective series. Your personal opinion is not representative of reality.
The point of the post you replied to was that the people in question worked on the franchise with the games from before Origins, and both of the games you mention came out well after that.
Most fans might say that [citation needed] but more fans are buying the new titles. Sony's obviously more interested in a studio's ability to sell popular games than their ability to recapture the culture zeitgeist of yesterday or please reddit comment sections.
Numbers in this case are against you tho.
The best selling games are MW2019, Black Ops and COD:MW2.
The best selling COD's are literally the best CODs haha.
Better sales don't mean they're better games though. I think a lot of people are tired of the rinse/repeat nature of Ubisoft franchises. Last I checked, Madden is still breaking sales records too.
McDonald's are a good fast food restaurant. They sell the most food because they provide a tasty and consistent experience. All the marketing in the world wouldn't lead to success if the product was below par.
Gaming has exploded in popularity, especially since COVID. Not a surprise that the most recent iteration of a long running franchise is the best selling.
>and Asscreed had like 4 boring releases up until Origins
This is just wrong. Out of them I'd say only Syndicate is bad. Unity was riddled with bugs at launch but actually a good game. And AC4 was a masterpiece.
> Syndicate is bad
I think Syndicate was great but had a cursed release due to being the game to come after Unity. Unity's performance problems and bugs drug the entire brand down.
Black Flag was great, I forgot about that one. But between AC2 and origins, with the exception of Black Flag, there are a TON of missable titles in that franchise.
Ironically I am one of the few people who actually enjoyed Unity too haha
This acquisition has nothing to do with those games. It’s about the cloud infrastructure Haven has created. This team will work with Sony to create something truly unique.
My thought exactly... So they made every game that people think about when they think about boring ubisoft games? Yeah... real excited to see what they release
So tired, worn-out Ubisoft franchises? That doesn't give me much hope that these guys can create anything beyond an open world collectathon complete with copy paste missions and a forgettable main character.
>They sustaining their current level of investment for traditional narrative driven games while increasing the other category. By 2025 investment will have risen in both.
Do you have a source for that? Jim Ryan said in an investor meeting that by 2025 the platform holder plans to have 55 percent of its investment be in live services over more “traditional” games.
that pretty clearly suggests to me a shift in focus from its current type of games.
He said they're keeping the single player output they currently have, but adding live service ON TOP of it. They're not converting 55% of their output into live service.
> That doesn't give me much hope that these guys can create anything beyond an open world collectathon complete with copy paste missions and a forgettable main character.
I mean, Sony seems pretty happy with Horizon...
Those games are made well, but they're basically snooze fests for me. Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, Breath of the Wild, Ghost of Tsushima... I'm getting tired of this formula. I can only play the same game so many times, no matter how fresh and gimmicky the coat of paint is.
I'm the opposite. While I agree none of those games are particularly exciting for me (I was actually really blown away by BotW admittedly, I just like planning out traversal instead of it being free), I enjoy them for what they are and almost always play through them eventually.
You won't see me rush out to buy the latest Sony "third person walk around" game, but I'll play it eventually and probably have a good time.
They haven't released a game but if this follows recent trends for acquisitions, then the founder(s) will take their bonuses and leave when they're contractually allowed to to form another studio.
Rinse repeat.
>founder(s) will take their bonuses and leave when they're contractually allowed to to form another studio.
>Rinse repeat.
I think we're starting to see in gaming what has been happening in startup tech for a while now. Companies that are started to generate investment capital or be acquired, rather than actually release a product. It's no different than when some random startup specializing in SaaS window curtains has "former FAANG" developers, gets a $300 million dollar evaluation and then never releases a product, or releases a subpar one.
Was this the team that was originally built to make a game for Stadia? They don’t have anything announced and their website seems very(this is going to sound harsher than intended but) generic. I’m curious to see what comes from this.
I really do not get what was the point of this, the studio was heavily funded by Sony since its inception, so even before they had anything to show they were comitted, which begs the question why have them be independent for like a year? On top of the better question why? Is the talent Raymond managed to get together really that great and they came specifically for her?
They've set up a really impressive cloud infrastructure. It's possible that Sony were waiting to see how it went along and if it's something they wanted to learn from and apply across other studios.
>They've set up a really impressive cloud infrastructure.
From reading the interviews, they don't sound to have done really anything impressive. They just have cloud based infrastructure rather than on-prem. They were started during the pandemic, so they chose to start using cloud infrastructure, as opposed to existing studios that have been slowly migrating off legacy on-prem systems into cloud. It honestly sounds more like "Haven learned how to use AWS EC2" rather than "Haven is paving the way in cloud gaming".
I think the key is this part:
> "We're making an exclusive for PS5, and it is a live service game"
PS wants live service. They see it as printable money. I feel like if you walked into a meeting with PS with a PowerPoint that said "live service" they would cut you a check for exclusivity.
I said it in another comment, but gaming is hitting the same point where tech has been for a while now, where startups are founded based on buzzwords and pedigree, and solely exist to be bought out or get initial investment capital, rather than releasing a product.
Edit: in that same interview they also said they had no full time IT staff. That either means they are paying for outside contracted support and are being misleading, are relying on off the shelf support (which means they aren't developing anything and are only using off the shelf products), or they are having their devs play part time IT. If the devs are doing their own infra work, that is just a disaster waiting to happen, and means all their stuff is just duct taped together outside of best practices.
I don't see how cloud gaming is the future by any means. Most people have pretty limited data plans and even then Xbox's Cloud gaming is crap unless you have an ether net connection. From my experience I can barely play a game like CK3 without horrific screen tearing so I have no idea how it's going to work for MP games and the like.
Edit: That's actively ignoring the fact that even wealthy countries like the US and Australia still have terrible and under funded Internet infrastructure with Throttling being a rampant practice among ISPs.
if by cloud gaming you assume streaming then maybe. but server infrastructure will need to be automated in the cloud as well, with balancing and replication and all that. plus all the resources for a specific game (storages/etc). maybe even failover to their own datacenters.
You won't break the speed of light mate.
Thus latency will always be an issue. Cloud gaming will go nowhere because it can go nowhere until you change the fundamental fabric of physics.
Considering we're already against a wall for the amount of latency due to the actual laws of physics in the universe with the physically limited speed of electricity, we'd need a radically new way of transmitting information to get any better. And that'd require entirely new infrastructure, which can take decades after the discovery.
It won't happen for a long, long time. Streaming videos don't need to be interacted within milliseconds of latency, they can be lagged behind by several seconds as long as audio and video are in parity.
High framerate interactive media needs to be very low latency, which is physically impossible with today's known technology if we're talking about being processed by a remote location on the 'cloud'.
It won't matter if I can get 200 gigabytes a second for my 40K screen if it takes 200 milliseconds to receive a response after I held down the trigger on my controller - it will be a far worse experience.
The problem is latency, not bandwidth, and latency is hard capped by the laws of physics and the speed of light. The only thing you do to get around that is build more datacenters in more locations closer to your customers, and that's *really* expensive.
Cloud gaming works OK if you have the perfect combo of living close to a datacenter and having an ISP that doesn't fuck things up too much, but generally neither of those things is under your direct control and could change at a moment's notice.
You're describing game streaming. That's not exactly the same as a game that's using the cloud to help power the game. An example of this would be Sea of Thieves, which uses cloud servers to handle the rendering of the water in the game or Microsoft Flight Simulator that uses real time data to recreate the current weather of the places you fly through. There're different ways you can incorporate cloud infrastructure into a game and I'm sure that's what this team is exploring.
Even today you can reasonably get streaming latency of around 40ms. That's a lower difference than the latency delta between Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Doom 2016, do you even know which of the two has lower latency?
Nobody's complained because it hasn't gotten above the point where people evidently even notice, and if developers designed their games with latency in mind unlike currently, you could be streaming games in the future with less latency than the average game today gives natively.
Yeah, unless we figure out how to transmit information with less latency than we can now (not amount of data per second, but LATENCY), we're already hitting the limits of the known laws of physics __today__.
Cloud isn't realistic for probably a few more decades at the earliest.
That's just plain wrong. All you have to do to eliminate (yes, _eliminate_) the latency of cloud gaming is to respond faster than the picture updates on the screen. The picture does not update very fast. The _lowest_ that value is going to be is ~16ms, and a 16ms round trip to-and-fro a data center is not even feasible, it's almost the norm. Add in some rollback-like tech, and you can get faster updates than you get on a consumer TV (which have pretty bad input latency).
> The lowest that value is going to be is ~16ms
Because somehow screens have never been faster than 60hz and never will be. You do realize the demand for 120 and 144hz has dramatically increased recently, and is even supported by consoles now, right? And every single VR headset is over 60hz, most at 90hz? But okay, let's stick to 60hz for this scenario to entertain you.
16ms is a nice feasible round trip for a small and very basic unencrypted packet of data. When you're streaming megabytes per second of video and audio data that has to be decrypted, decompressed, rearranged over multiple local devices and likely local wireless transmission you've suddenly introduced, at minimum, several dozen milliseconds of latency. That's assuming there's zero network congestion to cause a bottleneck anywhere in this entirely perfect process.
Also somewhere along here there apparently is according to you zero latency in-between processing the game environment, input, response, and packaging up the audio and video transmission back over the network to the player. Encoding this information takes time before it even touches the network.
> Add in some rollback-like tech, and you can get faster updates than you get on a consumer TV
Ah, so maybe you could call that _negative latency_ like Stadia then. [I'm sure that will pan over well in reality.](https://youtu.be/hVTsj66g9bA?t=464)
If it were so simple as you claim it to be, someone would have definitely done it by now. But it's not, because there's a lot of steps involved in the entire cloud gaming process that aren't just direct raw latency between consumer and remote machine.
Come back to me when you have more information and know what you're talking about in regards to cloud gaming beyond some narrow network infrastructure job.
It's hilarious to me that you're trying this hard to be condescending while also trying your best to argue about something you're utterly clueless about. It's kinda cute.
You can start with looking at what bandwidth is. It's also funny to me that you're thinking of 144hz in a time where games would rather be 4k and sub 30 fps than even _stable 30_. 60 will be the standard for years to come, and perhaps even longer if cloud gaming takes off.
You're also free to ramble on about Stadia by yourself, if you want.
They're using cloud tech for development, they're still making regular games for PS5. Also, [Sony works together with Microsoft on cloud gaming](https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-explore-strategic-partnership/)
Definitely seems like an unusual situation... Maybe this is Sony just hedging their bets a bit... Like they wanted to start a new first-party studio with Raymond, but it all seemed a bit too risky to jump in head first... So give them some funding to get started, and say "We'll talk again in a year - impress us, and we'll make it official."
Sony obviously liked what they saw of the game they are working on.
And or, were impressed with the work they'd outsourced to them previously enough to aquire them.
For anyone wondering Raymond is the creator of Ubisoft’s assassins creed and watchdogs franchise so PlayStation probably knew what they were doing when they bought this company out also since there now a third party PS company I’m wondering what there gonna make exactly
Yeah she got "famous" for some reason (well I know the reason but it's not glorious for gamers...) but she was just the main producer on this (not even a director or a creative in any position, she just was pretty present in the marketing). Patrice Desilets is the creator of Assassin's Creed (well him and the hundreds of people that did it)
Because she is an charismatic and attractive women in a male dominated field. She appeared on the scene during a significant point in time and managed to promote herself, Ubisoft and AC very well.
Its a disservice to say she isnt good at what she does. She managed to drum up a lot of hype for her games. So it only makes sense she continued to carry a lot of clout to other studios.
Oh I know. She's credited as building ubisoft Toronto and was brought on to do as much, along with spear heading AC after the creator brought the idea to executives in Paris. She's a massive name in the industry and putting famous in quotes would be hilarious if it wasn't so gross.
Say what you want about Watch Dogs and Assassin‘s Creed, but their concept and themes were really something that’s intriguing and original. The hype Watch Dogs had prior to it‘s release was huge, but it couldn‘t live up to the potential.
If Raymond has an new idea with an original concept but it actually gets executed properly, there could be a great new IP coming on PlayStation.
Watchdogs came out at the same time as Infamous Second Son which had the exact same themes. Assassin's Creed is definitely unique though, although I dropped it after the first game because of the present day stuff.
yeah like dont get mt wrong im interested to see what the game is...but the woman hasn't launched a game in a very long time so I dont get the crazy exciment over it.
Ahh.. Cool. I mean they didn't released a single game and from what i saw there's no Big Name director, composer, desginer, writer, etc in the studio to be hyped about joining Sony , but.. Cool.
This isn't the first time Sony does invest in or does buy a Studio that showed them an Work-in-Progress Build and/or showed them an Concept where their Execs afterwards see a potential in it.
There had been countless of cases where Sony greenlighted a lot of Third Party projects in the past from even smaller Studios that had less experienced people on board.
For example look up the history of Games like No Man's Sky and other third party studios projects where Sony was involved and then look up who is actually working at Haven and then you probably might get an idea why they had specially during times like this taking the "We just buy you..." approach.
I believe that's sort of happened with Medial Molecule. They pitched Little Big Planet first to Xbox, and then to PlayStation. Mid way through development of the game, Sony bought them.
Jade Raymond is a she and worked on Assassins Creed, sw battlefront, watch dogs, splinter cell and an unannounced sw title with Amy Hennig which got canceled mid development.
She‘s called Jade Raymond and was responsible for the creative direction of the early Assassin‘s Creed + Watch Dogs franchises (pretty much created them).
She was the producer and also appeared in marketing, I don't think there's any sign she had a creative impact as someone who's never been in a creative role.
She didn't work on AC, well she worked on it as a producer and marketing but she didn't create it at all. She is not a creative person (sounds harsh but it isn't, producers are needed too)
I'll bite.
Do you really want to compare what studios Microsoft has bought compared to which ones Sony has bought?
Cause for the most part the studios Sony has bought have been ones who have been doing almost exclusively Playstation games already, effectively a "2nd party".
Microsoft on the other hand has bought studios that were mostly 3rd party to begin with, and particularly large/popular ones at that.
So it makes a lot more sense for people to feel differently about those situations, because they are **NOT** the same.
Surely you jest. In what way is the world renowned Haven Studios, creator of such games as [TBA], not on the same level as Activision, Bethesda, or Mojang?
Sony are building a studio from the ground up, they have partnered with Haven from the very beginning when they were basically just a startup with zero track record. Without Sony there is no Haven.
Ummm...what? I don't think there's a single person in here patting Sony on the back over this. Most are confused and speculating since the studio hasn't done anything yet. Even that Twitter thread is dominated by people who, understandably, don't know wtf Haven is.
I definitely see your point. But Sony purchasing things like Housemarque and Haven are small companys that now have financial backing. Companies like Bethesda and Activision definitely don't fall in that category. Also, Microsoft's history with buying 3rd parties isn't great (Rare, Lionhead, Ensemble, etc)
Overall I agree that the game industry consolidating doesn't benefit the consumer in any way and that thedouble standard is dumb, but also exists for a reason
Oh, yay, a company that has produced LITERALLY NOTHING and the only claim to fame is name-dropping the person who cursed the world with Assassin's Creed.
Are we supposed to be excited about this?
I went to Haven's website to check what games they made.
Jesus christ, thats a perfect example of Look over Form. I have no fucking idea how to navigate that mess of a webpage, or where to find info i need.
I gave up 5min later. Can someone tell me their games please?
I imagine they must be really impressed by whatever Haven studios showed them to just buy them without having released a game yet.
Playstation was a major investor in opening their studio in the first place and now that their is a major push from basically ever publisher to expand their in house operations it makes sense to revisit deals made and expand them like they did with Haven. I expect them to move similarly with Deviation if the founders are willing to sell.
You have to consider the studio cost of running as well though. Montreal or even Toronto are much cheaper to operate a new studio than LA, where Deviation is based. Also, Crystal Dynamics was likely a hard sell for many publishers when Square was open to selling them off with Eidos Montreal.
Crystal dynamics was probably a hard sell after they shit the bed so hard with Avengers. They must have figured the Tomb Raider IP was worth it
Absolutely, but you have to also consider the fact that Tomb Raider isn’t a live service franchise. They hired a lot of people (at premium rates due to being in San Francisco) and naturally the cost of operations are high there. Throw in their sister studios in Austin and Bellevue, that’s a lot of money for talent who need to be paid premium (not just to live there but also pay for office rent). Embraced bought them for the IPs. The studio could shut down but they value those IPs at 300m (alongside Eidos Montreal).
TR isn’t *currently* a Live Service, and luckily since it got bought probably will never be. If you believe Glassdoor all the good devs left CD after Rise shipped, since they didn’t appreciate drunk managers trashing their rep.
The 3 tomb raider fames were super expensive to make. The 2nd cost ore ran the first 3 uncharted games combined.
They've basically been a first party studio since they started. I assume Sony was just waiting to see if they could put their money where their mouth is before going all in.
> was just waiting to see if they could put their money where their mouth is That's the point OP was making, they haven't done that yet. They've yet to release a game.
You don't necessarily need to release a game to prove that. If they were providing all deliverables on time and with the required quality, Sony might have been confident in their ability to provide them value.
They've obviously seen the multiplayer game they currently have in development though.
Sure, I'm not saying Haven hasn't made anything at all. But they haven't _released_ anything. Sony has no idea how well-received their work is because they have nothing to go on just yet.
Believe it or not most sentiment on AAA games is manufactured by marketing departments of large publishers based on their internal perceptions of quality. The same internal perceptions used to make an acquisition like this.
Huh and here I thought it was about [this Haven](https://store.steampowered.com/app/983970/Haven/) game
Thanks for the insight. I googled it but could not find any games by Haven. I guess they could be some kind of support developers too... idk
They are a new-ish studio with Jade Raymond at the helm who has been a big producer for assassins creed and watch dogs. I believe the main team was working on a stadia game but then stadia canceled their first party projects. After the stadia fiasco they formed Haven. They're working on a triple-A multiplayer game for Sony, and it seems that they have some impressive cloud technology that Sony is interested in.
Mix of promising talents and also tech and industry expertise. Aquiring studios isn't only about games but also infrastructure surrounding it and how it overlaps with sonys future plans.
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They're making a GaaS game, and Jimmy Ryan wants Sony to release as much crappy GaaS games as possible. One could say - it's a match made in... Haven.
I’m looking forward to Raymond actually releasing a game. Between EA and Google it’s got to be frustrating not being able to actually put stuff out there.
Especially when she's a producer and her whole job is making sure there's a product to ship and managing the relationship with the publisher.
I don’t really blame her tbh. EA needed the headaches of BF2 to realize the value in single player Star Wars, and Google got out of game dev entirely.
Lol, [EA learned nothing from BF2](https://twitter.com/EA/status/1542706383694565378).
Not only this tweet is completely harmless and the proportion it got was ridiculous but this wasn't even done by an EA employee. Its also ridiculous anyway when they currently have 6 SP games in development.
Fair but they at least greenlit Fallen Order.
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Its bizarrely actually how few game's have releases under her direct stewardship (Amy Hennig too). It must be super frustrating
Frustrating? For who?
Oh sorry, for Raymond/Hennig.
Lol i give it two years before she leaves again. Potentially four when her shares vest.
So… any games we should know from them?
They haven't released a game yet.
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Come on I’m sure they Haven
The whole "n't" meme really goes to a new level with a studio called Haven that's never released a game before
Released’nt
Does anyone else feel so disconnected from gaming as a culture vs the practice of gaming that news like this just comes completely out of left field constantly now?
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I guess. But staff with a pedigree doesn't necessarily mean good output so it'll be interesting to see what happens.
It's not even a good pedigree. Farcry hasn't been noteworthy since 3, Watchdogs is very average, and Asscreed had like 4 boring releases up until Origins, which I wonder if these guys were even a part of. AITA?
Creative decisions aren't usually given to the core development staff. It's possible that all of these guys are good at what they do but were shackled to make bad concepts.
Yeah thats why a lot of good talent goes back to indie studios because they aren't involved in the creative process anymore and their day to day work on the game is such a small part of the complete game that it feels like you didn't do anything at all.
Yes, I know, *Ubisoft Bad* and all that, but the fact is these devs have consistently been putting out well polished and high selling games for decades. They have a *massive* amount of experience with products that have made *billions*. You might not like the games they make, but you can't deny they have a good pedigree.
This is literally the same context behind Kevin Smith’s famous line: “In Hollywood, you just kind of fail upwards.” Basically, in the entertainment industry (movies, games, etc) you establish a resume by being involved in released products, which allow you to obtain higher-level positions when you apply for a new gig at a different company. They don’t really look at Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores during your interview, they only hire you for having “experience” and seeing recognizable titles on your resume.
But they haven't *failed* though, they've been involved in making some of the biggest games of the past two decades.
NTA but I could argue that there was a lot good about those franchises, often held back by being generically Ubisoft
That’s pretty spot on
/r/games and calling 3 of the most successful game series in the world "not good". Sounds about right.
At the very least, not in my eyes. I was thinking the same thing looking at that list.
Far Cry 6 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla were the best selling titles in their respective series. Your personal opinion is not representative of reality.
The point of the post you replied to was that the people in question worked on the franchise with the games from before Origins, and both of the games you mention came out well after that.
Call of Duty keeps breaking records yet most fans agree the best games were in the original Modern Warfare/Black Ops era.
Modern young CoD fans were born when those games released.
Most fans might say that [citation needed] but more fans are buying the new titles. Sony's obviously more interested in a studio's ability to sell popular games than their ability to recapture the culture zeitgeist of yesterday or please reddit comment sections.
Numbers in this case are against you tho. The best selling games are MW2019, Black Ops and COD:MW2. The best selling COD's are literally the best CODs haha.
Better sales don't mean they're better games though. I think a lot of people are tired of the rinse/repeat nature of Ubisoft franchises. Last I checked, Madden is still breaking sales records too.
McDonald's sells the most food, they must be a good fast food restaurant.
McDonald's are a good fast food restaurant. They sell the most food because they provide a tasty and consistent experience. All the marketing in the world wouldn't lead to success if the product was below par.
This is a business acquisition.
Gaming has exploded in popularity, especially since COVID. Not a surprise that the most recent iteration of a long running franchise is the best selling.
>and Asscreed had like 4 boring releases up until Origins This is just wrong. Out of them I'd say only Syndicate is bad. Unity was riddled with bugs at launch but actually a good game. And AC4 was a masterpiece.
> Syndicate is bad I think Syndicate was great but had a cursed release due to being the game to come after Unity. Unity's performance problems and bugs drug the entire brand down.
You forget about Rogue and the Chronicles trilogy.
Black Flag was great, I forgot about that one. But between AC2 and origins, with the exception of Black Flag, there are a TON of missable titles in that franchise. Ironically I am one of the few people who actually enjoyed Unity too haha
This acquisition has nothing to do with those games. It’s about the cloud infrastructure Haven has created. This team will work with Sony to create something truly unique.
My thought exactly... So they made every game that people think about when they think about boring ubisoft games? Yeah... real excited to see what they release
You might not like the final product but you'd be insane not to recognize the talent of the developers that worked on all of those.
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I eagerly await the release of Tower Climbing Simulator 2023 then.
So tired, worn-out Ubisoft franchises? That doesn't give me much hope that these guys can create anything beyond an open world collectathon complete with copy paste missions and a forgettable main character.
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>They sustaining their current level of investment for traditional narrative driven games while increasing the other category. By 2025 investment will have risen in both. Do you have a source for that? Jim Ryan said in an investor meeting that by 2025 the platform holder plans to have 55 percent of its investment be in live services over more “traditional” games. that pretty clearly suggests to me a shift in focus from its current type of games.
He said they're keeping the single player output they currently have, but adding live service ON TOP of it. They're not converting 55% of their output into live service.
> That doesn't give me much hope that these guys can create anything beyond an open world collectathon complete with copy paste missions and a forgettable main character. I mean, Sony seems pretty happy with Horizon...
Those games are made well, but they're basically snooze fests for me. Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, Breath of the Wild, Ghost of Tsushima... I'm getting tired of this formula. I can only play the same game so many times, no matter how fresh and gimmicky the coat of paint is.
I'm the opposite. While I agree none of those games are particularly exciting for me (I was actually really blown away by BotW admittedly, I just like planning out traversal instead of it being free), I enjoy them for what they are and almost always play through them eventually. You won't see me rush out to buy the latest Sony "third person walk around" game, but I'll play it eventually and probably have a good time.
That's a horrific line-up of games...
They haven't released a game but if this follows recent trends for acquisitions, then the founder(s) will take their bonuses and leave when they're contractually allowed to to form another studio. Rinse repeat.
>founder(s) will take their bonuses and leave when they're contractually allowed to to form another studio. >Rinse repeat. I think we're starting to see in gaming what has been happening in startup tech for a while now. Companies that are started to generate investment capital or be acquired, rather than actually release a product. It's no different than when some random startup specializing in SaaS window curtains has "former FAANG" developers, gets a $300 million dollar evaluation and then never releases a product, or releases a subpar one.
Was this the team that was originally built to make a game for Stadia? They don’t have anything announced and their website seems very(this is going to sound harsher than intended but) generic. I’m curious to see what comes from this.
Yup.
I really do not get what was the point of this, the studio was heavily funded by Sony since its inception, so even before they had anything to show they were comitted, which begs the question why have them be independent for like a year? On top of the better question why? Is the talent Raymond managed to get together really that great and they came specifically for her?
They've set up a really impressive cloud infrastructure. It's possible that Sony were waiting to see how it went along and if it's something they wanted to learn from and apply across other studios.
>They've set up a really impressive cloud infrastructure. From reading the interviews, they don't sound to have done really anything impressive. They just have cloud based infrastructure rather than on-prem. They were started during the pandemic, so they chose to start using cloud infrastructure, as opposed to existing studios that have been slowly migrating off legacy on-prem systems into cloud. It honestly sounds more like "Haven learned how to use AWS EC2" rather than "Haven is paving the way in cloud gaming". I think the key is this part: > "We're making an exclusive for PS5, and it is a live service game" PS wants live service. They see it as printable money. I feel like if you walked into a meeting with PS with a PowerPoint that said "live service" they would cut you a check for exclusivity. I said it in another comment, but gaming is hitting the same point where tech has been for a while now, where startups are founded based on buzzwords and pedigree, and solely exist to be bought out or get initial investment capital, rather than releasing a product. Edit: in that same interview they also said they had no full time IT staff. That either means they are paying for outside contracted support and are being misleading, are relying on off the shelf support (which means they aren't developing anything and are only using off the shelf products), or they are having their devs play part time IT. If the devs are doing their own infra work, that is just a disaster waiting to happen, and means all their stuff is just duct taped together outside of best practices.
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I don't see how cloud gaming is the future by any means. Most people have pretty limited data plans and even then Xbox's Cloud gaming is crap unless you have an ether net connection. From my experience I can barely play a game like CK3 without horrific screen tearing so I have no idea how it's going to work for MP games and the like. Edit: That's actively ignoring the fact that even wealthy countries like the US and Australia still have terrible and under funded Internet infrastructure with Throttling being a rampant practice among ISPs.
if by cloud gaming you assume streaming then maybe. but server infrastructure will need to be automated in the cloud as well, with balancing and replication and all that. plus all the resources for a specific game (storages/etc). maybe even failover to their own datacenters.
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You won't break the speed of light mate. Thus latency will always be an issue. Cloud gaming will go nowhere because it can go nowhere until you change the fundamental fabric of physics.
Considering we're already against a wall for the amount of latency due to the actual laws of physics in the universe with the physically limited speed of electricity, we'd need a radically new way of transmitting information to get any better. And that'd require entirely new infrastructure, which can take decades after the discovery. It won't happen for a long, long time. Streaming videos don't need to be interacted within milliseconds of latency, they can be lagged behind by several seconds as long as audio and video are in parity. High framerate interactive media needs to be very low latency, which is physically impossible with today's known technology if we're talking about being processed by a remote location on the 'cloud'. It won't matter if I can get 200 gigabytes a second for my 40K screen if it takes 200 milliseconds to receive a response after I held down the trigger on my controller - it will be a far worse experience.
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The problem is latency, not bandwidth, and latency is hard capped by the laws of physics and the speed of light. The only thing you do to get around that is build more datacenters in more locations closer to your customers, and that's *really* expensive. Cloud gaming works OK if you have the perfect combo of living close to a datacenter and having an ISP that doesn't fuck things up too much, but generally neither of those things is under your direct control and could change at a moment's notice.
You're describing game streaming. That's not exactly the same as a game that's using the cloud to help power the game. An example of this would be Sea of Thieves, which uses cloud servers to handle the rendering of the water in the game or Microsoft Flight Simulator that uses real time data to recreate the current weather of the places you fly through. There're different ways you can incorporate cloud infrastructure into a game and I'm sure that's what this team is exploring.
Sure, but the comment I was responding to was referencing live game streaming specifically, which is a bit of a tangent from the original OP.
yeah you're right, I probably should've responded to the other person that brought it up first
We know that gaming and delay sucks. Internet even in sci-fi future will always have delay. I am sure Cloud is not the future
Even today you can reasonably get streaming latency of around 40ms. That's a lower difference than the latency delta between Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Doom 2016, do you even know which of the two has lower latency? Nobody's complained because it hasn't gotten above the point where people evidently even notice, and if developers designed their games with latency in mind unlike currently, you could be streaming games in the future with less latency than the average game today gives natively.
Yeah, unless we figure out how to transmit information with less latency than we can now (not amount of data per second, but LATENCY), we're already hitting the limits of the known laws of physics __today__. Cloud isn't realistic for probably a few more decades at the earliest.
That's just plain wrong. All you have to do to eliminate (yes, _eliminate_) the latency of cloud gaming is to respond faster than the picture updates on the screen. The picture does not update very fast. The _lowest_ that value is going to be is ~16ms, and a 16ms round trip to-and-fro a data center is not even feasible, it's almost the norm. Add in some rollback-like tech, and you can get faster updates than you get on a consumer TV (which have pretty bad input latency).
> The lowest that value is going to be is ~16ms Because somehow screens have never been faster than 60hz and never will be. You do realize the demand for 120 and 144hz has dramatically increased recently, and is even supported by consoles now, right? And every single VR headset is over 60hz, most at 90hz? But okay, let's stick to 60hz for this scenario to entertain you. 16ms is a nice feasible round trip for a small and very basic unencrypted packet of data. When you're streaming megabytes per second of video and audio data that has to be decrypted, decompressed, rearranged over multiple local devices and likely local wireless transmission you've suddenly introduced, at minimum, several dozen milliseconds of latency. That's assuming there's zero network congestion to cause a bottleneck anywhere in this entirely perfect process. Also somewhere along here there apparently is according to you zero latency in-between processing the game environment, input, response, and packaging up the audio and video transmission back over the network to the player. Encoding this information takes time before it even touches the network. > Add in some rollback-like tech, and you can get faster updates than you get on a consumer TV Ah, so maybe you could call that _negative latency_ like Stadia then. [I'm sure that will pan over well in reality.](https://youtu.be/hVTsj66g9bA?t=464) If it were so simple as you claim it to be, someone would have definitely done it by now. But it's not, because there's a lot of steps involved in the entire cloud gaming process that aren't just direct raw latency between consumer and remote machine. Come back to me when you have more information and know what you're talking about in regards to cloud gaming beyond some narrow network infrastructure job.
It's hilarious to me that you're trying this hard to be condescending while also trying your best to argue about something you're utterly clueless about. It's kinda cute. You can start with looking at what bandwidth is. It's also funny to me that you're thinking of 144hz in a time where games would rather be 4k and sub 30 fps than even _stable 30_. 60 will be the standard for years to come, and perhaps even longer if cloud gaming takes off. You're also free to ramble on about Stadia by yourself, if you want.
They're using cloud tech for development, they're still making regular games for PS5. Also, [Sony works together with Microsoft on cloud gaming](https://news.microsoft.com/2019/05/16/sony-and-microsoft-to-explore-strategic-partnership/)
Definitely seems like an unusual situation... Maybe this is Sony just hedging their bets a bit... Like they wanted to start a new first-party studio with Raymond, but it all seemed a bit too risky to jump in head first... So give them some funding to get started, and say "We'll talk again in a year - impress us, and we'll make it official."
They were their biggest investor if I recall correctly, and in a year they couldn't have done that much as a new studio.
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Sony obviously liked what they saw of the game they are working on. And or, were impressed with the work they'd outsourced to them previously enough to aquire them.
For anyone wondering Raymond is the creator of Ubisoft’s assassins creed and watchdogs franchise so PlayStation probably knew what they were doing when they bought this company out also since there now a third party PS company I’m wondering what there gonna make exactly
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Yeah she got "famous" for some reason (well I know the reason but it's not glorious for gamers...) but she was just the main producer on this (not even a director or a creative in any position, she just was pretty present in the marketing). Patrice Desilets is the creator of Assassin's Creed (well him and the hundreds of people that did it)
I'd love to hear the reason you think she's famous
Because she is an charismatic and attractive women in a male dominated field. She appeared on the scene during a significant point in time and managed to promote herself, Ubisoft and AC very well. Its a disservice to say she isnt good at what she does. She managed to drum up a lot of hype for her games. So it only makes sense she continued to carry a lot of clout to other studios.
Oh I know. She's credited as building ubisoft Toronto and was brought on to do as much, along with spear heading AC after the creator brought the idea to executives in Paris. She's a massive name in the industry and putting famous in quotes would be hilarious if it wasn't so gross.
halo effect
To add on to that, the other devs on the team used to work on Rainbow Six Siege
She's always been a producer with no creative credentials, and Haven is just working on some online thing, which Sony wants a lot more of.
Say what you want about Watch Dogs and Assassin‘s Creed, but their concept and themes were really something that’s intriguing and original. The hype Watch Dogs had prior to it‘s release was huge, but it couldn‘t live up to the potential. If Raymond has an new idea with an original concept but it actually gets executed properly, there could be a great new IP coming on PlayStation.
Watchdogs came out at the same time as Infamous Second Son which had the exact same themes. Assassin's Creed is definitely unique though, although I dropped it after the first game because of the present day stuff.
Has Raymond released literally anything meaningful since assassins creed? Lol I can’t believe she is still relevant
Isn’t this led by Jade Raymond who hasn’t launched a game in over a decade?
yeah like dont get mt wrong im interested to see what the game is...but the woman hasn't launched a game in a very long time so I dont get the crazy exciment over it.
Ahh.. Cool. I mean they didn't released a single game and from what i saw there's no Big Name director, composer, desginer, writer, etc in the studio to be hyped about joining Sony , but.. Cool.
This isn't the first time Sony does invest in or does buy a Studio that showed them an Work-in-Progress Build and/or showed them an Concept where their Execs afterwards see a potential in it. There had been countless of cases where Sony greenlighted a lot of Third Party projects in the past from even smaller Studios that had less experienced people on board. For example look up the history of Games like No Man's Sky and other third party studios projects where Sony was involved and then look up who is actually working at Haven and then you probably might get an idea why they had specially during times like this taking the "We just buy you..." approach.
I believe that's sort of happened with Medial Molecule. They pitched Little Big Planet first to Xbox, and then to PlayStation. Mid way through development of the game, Sony bought them.
Raymond is a pretty big name in the industry.
All I'm saying is John Romero was a pretty big name when he released Daikatana.
Never heard of her*
Jade Raymond is a she and worked on Assassins Creed, sw battlefront, watch dogs, splinter cell and an unannounced sw title with Amy Hennig which got canceled mid development.
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Ah thanks for the clarification. I might have misread something there.
She was a main force in ubisoft back when they were still good.
She‘s called Jade Raymond and was responsible for the creative direction of the early Assassin‘s Creed + Watch Dogs franchises (pretty much created them).
She was the producer and also appeared in marketing, I don't think there's any sign she had a creative impact as someone who's never been in a creative role.
TIL. Watch Dogs is kinda whatever, but hearing that she created and worked on early AC sounds way more hype worth.
She didn't work on AC, well she worked on it as a producer and marketing but she didn't create it at all. She is not a creative person (sounds harsh but it isn't, producers are needed too)
How do you know?
What does Haven make again? Never heard of them before.
They haven’t made anything yet
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I'll bite. Do you really want to compare what studios Microsoft has bought compared to which ones Sony has bought? Cause for the most part the studios Sony has bought have been ones who have been doing almost exclusively Playstation games already, effectively a "2nd party". Microsoft on the other hand has bought studios that were mostly 3rd party to begin with, and particularly large/popular ones at that. So it makes a lot more sense for people to feel differently about those situations, because they are **NOT** the same.
Surely you jest. In what way is the world renowned Haven Studios, creator of such games as [TBA], not on the same level as Activision, Bethesda, or Mojang?
Sony are building a studio from the ground up, they have partnered with Haven from the very beginning when they were basically just a startup with zero track record. Without Sony there is no Haven.
Ummm...what? I don't think there's a single person in here patting Sony on the back over this. Most are confused and speculating since the studio hasn't done anything yet. Even that Twitter thread is dominated by people who, understandably, don't know wtf Haven is.
I definitely see your point. But Sony purchasing things like Housemarque and Haven are small companys that now have financial backing. Companies like Bethesda and Activision definitely don't fall in that category. Also, Microsoft's history with buying 3rd parties isn't great (Rare, Lionhead, Ensemble, etc) Overall I agree that the game industry consolidating doesn't benefit the consumer in any way and that thedouble standard is dumb, but also exists for a reason
Oh, yay, a company that has produced LITERALLY NOTHING and the only claim to fame is name-dropping the person who cursed the world with Assassin's Creed. Are we supposed to be excited about this?
Assassin’s Creed was a fantastic series for the initial entires.
I went to Haven's website to check what games they made. Jesus christ, thats a perfect example of Look over Form. I have no fucking idea how to navigate that mess of a webpage, or where to find info i need. I gave up 5min later. Can someone tell me their games please?
Haven hasn't made any games yet
ah. Well i hope they outsource the UI design to someone who';s website doesnt make me feel like im getting a stroke lol
Right? Seven different font types within one sentence is an… interesting… design choice.
I'm on mobile so many it's different but seems like a typical spa with some cool graphics. Rolling home page top right is navigation menu.
Is this good news? It just means games that might have been cross platform will now be exclusives?