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Jade Raymond introduces Haven, a new Montreal-based game development studio working on an original, new IP for PlayStation

Perrott

Gold Member
Wonder if Amy Hennig went with her and is helming production or director? I miss her work.
A dude who was gameplay director at Eidos Montreal on Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been appointed as the game director of this upcoming new IP by Haven Studios. He also was a lead on Splinter Cell: Blacklist, where he got to work with Raymond at her Ubi Toronto studio.
 
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Heisenberg007

Gold Journalism
A dude who was gameplay director at Eidos Montreal on Shadow of the Tomb Raider has been appointed as the game director of this upcoming new IP by Haven Studios. He also was a lead on Splinter Cell: Blacklist, where he got to work with Raymond at her Ubi Toronto studio.
Not a big fan of SOTR but Blacklist was very good. With Sony's vision, tools, support, and expertise, they have the potential of delivering a very good game. Excited.
 

HoodWinked

Member
You know how a good franchise plants hints and easter eggs so later on they have a nice payoff. This Jade Raymond game is that in the gaming metaverse.

This is going to be masterful. It's going to be a tlou2 situation all over again. Say it's bad and bring up valid complaints be labeled a sexist. Have all your industry buddies shower it with praise. The industry nepotism lives on.
 

NoviDon

Member
"....And Sony does, too. Their commitment to excellence is unmatched. It’s why I couldn’t be happier for their backing and support.

Together, we want to create games that are a haven for players, and we want to build a studio that is a haven for developers. So, while we don’t have many details to announce today, I want the PlayStation community to know that Haven Studios is already hard at work ...."

Picking great lead developers and building a studio from the ground up with them, having that studio make console exclusive IP for you, then if they have a big hit buy the company outright and make the hit into a cash cow franchise takes time and patience, but smart and cost effective strategy in the long haul . Invest tens of millions and get 100s of million back, or if they make a cash cow franchise, billions back.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
what didn't you like about uncharted 3?
Rewrites could have been the problem but there felt a few too many plotholes. Off memory, the antagonists were not fleshed as well as I'd hoped. Talbot appears and drugs Cutter and disappears. Never mentioned again. Talbot looked like he was drugging and controlling Marlene but it never went anywhere (he would whisper in her ear a few times but it never went anywhere). The treasure being a drug that is destroyed in a cutscene. Just felt underwhelming. I had no issue with Marlene revealing Drake wasn't who he said he was, but it never mattered afterwards as it never affected the plot so why mention it.

I wasn't a fan of the ship detour although overall Uncharted 3's set pieces were brilliant. It's a very serviceable game but I expect better from Amy. If it was almost anyone else I'd say they did a good job. It speak more to Amy's talent than anything else.
 

Evil Calvin

Afraid of Boobs
Isn't this like her 3rd or 4th new IP since she left Ubisoft? She keeps moving and getting canned. Motive? Stadia studios? Good luck!

Has she even released a game in the last 10+ years?
 
Isn't this like her 3rd or 4th new IP since she left Ubisoft? She keeps moving and getting canned. Motive? Stadia studios? Good luck!

Has she even released a game in the last 10+ years?

She's primarly been in an executive role since her later years at Ubisoft

She's been responsible for building up the studios and hiring talent and she is actually really good at that
 

Edgelord79

Gold Member
Interested to see what they come up with. I think Sony is a good fit for Haven.

Going to guess a narrative driven experience with a deep message regarding social commentary.
 

Duchess

Member
There's a chance that she had ideas for games that were considered too risky for other publishers and developers to want to take on. That might change with Sony, who will bankroll it on the chance they get something very special. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with.
 

JimmyRustler

Gold Member
There's a chance that she had ideas for games that were considered too risky for other publishers and developers to want to take on. That might change with Sony, who will bankroll it on the chance they get something very special. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with.
Man, the Y from your Username that jumps into the 2nd row really rustles my jimmies.

Faust Faust Do the needful. Fix this.
 

xrnzaaas

Gold Member
Her recent portfolio doesn't look very hot, but that can always change if the studio grabs good talent and is given proper creative freedom. And if she doesn't go too woke, of course. ;)
 
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ButchCat

Member
She's not a very good producer if she's good at starting projects and never finishing them. Seems like she's been around a dozen studios that have produced absolutely zilch.
 
You're saying alot of extra nothing for a simple concept.

Sony has yet to buy a 3rd party developer or publisher. The developers they bought have worked with them already for years. After a few successful games Sony decides to buy them and bring them into their first party to expand them further and make new IP's. Out of these studio purchases and expansion you get other areas of growth like support studios. Xdev, ICE team, and Visual Arts Service Group. The latter Which has now opened another studio in Malaysia.

Now we are seeing this same type of strategy with this new studio, Haven. If it proves a success Sony then might buy them.

This is what Sony calls organic growth.


MS has been buying 3rd party multiplatform developers that have established games on every platform. All they've been doing is removing access to other consoles.


They. Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.

Again, trying to make an ethical debate out of something where ethical violations are not present, is a fail. The reason Sony's not purchased a 3P publisher (they have purchased 3P developers btw; if that dev has ever once made games for non-Sony platforms, like Psygnosis, then that is a 3P publisher they since purchased), is either because the larger Sony corporation never justified it, or because they could not afford it.

It's really that simple; you're speaking of Haven like that's the ONLY way Sony's done this and history is littered with examples where they've not done that approach. You're also acting like throwing a corporate-speak term like "organic growth" makes this more "noble" than other companies who have other means of financial or corporate culture to establish relationships with various developers, and that's the kind of argument only someone being narrow-minded on the topic would take.

You're acting like MS's purchasing of Zenimax is an exception in the industry; well maybe for a company like Sony it is, but Sony's approach in the mid-90's was an exception to Sega and Nintendo, that didn't stop Sony from doing it. And why would it? They were 100% within legal means to take those approaches, it wasn't their fault they just so happened to have financial and corporate advantages Sega and Nintendo lacked. We're literally seeing the exact same thing now with Microsoft in relation to Sony, only now we're seeing some folks get caught in their feelings when they see the shoe fitting on the other foot?

The way I see it, if you can't acknowledge what I just said in the previous paragraph to be true, and if you were around at that time and had no objections to it, but suddenly take objections to the Zenimax purchase, then you're a hypocrite and the foundation of your argument is fraudulent. Because any company that is in any business, if they have the means available to them, WILL leverage those means to grow their corporation, and you can't hold their financial success in a free capitalist market as an anchor to hit them over the proverbial head with in shame, but completely ignore when other companies have done the exact same thing in years past (leveraging their corporate/financial strengths) when competitors may not've been able to, to grow their own companies and brands.

If you want to put it another way, again let's take it back to when Sony brought out the PS1. Companies like Sega and Nintendo had to buy their components from other companies like Hitachi and Silicon Graphics, and use third-party distribution channels. Sony didn't, because they had those resources in-house. However, Sony also purchased some smaller companies and businesses to some aspects (not all) of those internal resources over their time as an electronics company. Should we suddenly say that what they did leveraging that for PS1 was "inorganic growth" and anti-competitive/monopolistic simply because Sega and Nintendo could not leverage those same benefits?

That's why trying to make ALL of this into what's basically an ethical argument fueled over getting caught in your feelings that certain games may no longer be coming to your preferred platform, when no human/civil ethical violations against actual people are being done whatsoever, is fraudulent. It's making something that should be viewed through a legal perspective into an emotional argument, and contorting it into an argument driven mainly be emotion (or ethics that are driven by emotion) makes anyone making the argument from that side look irrational. And I'll stand by that the whole way through.

You don't get it. Without Sony money Capcom would have released in 2018 SFV vanilla with the content it had when released in 2016. Not the content SFVAE had in 2018. With or without Sony the development time, budget and content of the game was going to be the same.

How do YOU know that a 2018 SFV would've been the same as 2016 SFV content-wise? It's one thing it you think that would've been the case, but it's also very clear that SFV was rushed out the door in 2016 and Capcom Cup had a lot to do with that.

The difference was that thanks to the Sony money they were able to start its development 2 years before and to release it 2 years before. Capcom was going to delay 2 years the development of the game (so its release too) because didn't have enough cash to invest into that development.

I don't think the issue is Capcom lacked the cash; it's more that they lacked a reason to invest what cash they had INTO the game's development. Yes the company was struggling somewhat financially at that time but they weren't literally on the brink. Considering SFIV was one of their highest-selling games 7th-gen, you don't think they'd of been able to justify funding for a sequel with their own cash?

Fact is, they were going to anyway, the timescale just got bumped up due to Sony co-funding development.

Without Sony's money, SFV would have received the AE content it got in 2018 two years later, in 2020.

Again, this is purely speculation on your part, and there's very little you can reach to in proving this would've been the case.

We know Sony was negotiating timed exclusivity of Starfield during months before MS purchased them, but we don't know if they signed it or not. We know that when MS talks about games with a PS deal they always avoid mentioning it's only for Deathloop and Ghostwire, and also avoid mentioning to say that all Zenimax games released after these two will be full console exclusives.

No. We know they didn't sign it because Jim Ryan himself said in an interview around the time the intent for purchase was made, that he didn't know if Starfield was coming to PS5. You can argue he was putting on theatrics, but Jim doesn't strike me as that kind of guy.

It's much more logical to assume that the reason they avoid what you're speaking of, is because games like ESO and F'76 exist and will continue to exist on the PS consoles. Hell, the new DOOM expansion just released for, among other systems, PS4. This is what Microsoft (Spencer specifically) meant when they spoke of "legacy content". Not the wild fantasy of the next mainline Elder Scrolls, DOOM, Fallout etc. getting native ports to PS5 (or Switch). It's a common-sense conclusion and I don't know why so many are trying to Matrix-dodge the no-nonsense bullets that were spoken of in the roundtable.

There is also another game that would fit your speculations that isn't Starfield: Indiana Jones. Why? Because LucasArts Games is handling the publishing, IIRC. They're doing their own thing, so there is probably a PS5 version of that around. Now, will it release day-and-date with Xbox/PC/GamePass? That is debatable, it very well could be timed exclusive to those platforms. The fact it was not revealed in relation with Sony or the PS brand, and not retweeted by their social medias when Microsoft/Xbox did retweet those announcements, suggests at the very least it might be a timed exclusive to the Xbox/PC/GamePass ecosystem.

The same goes for Starfield, as Microsoft & Bethesda did some announcement for a character creation contest for that game a few weeks ago. Now, you COULD argue that, hey, maybe that's just because Microsoft may have marketing rights and that's the extent of it. This is a logical point of speculation. However, seeing as how Microsoft also owns the company with the dev studios making those games, they could have just as easily negotiated timed exclusivity deals for one or both before the September announcement, or even after it. Microsoft may've been legally barred from interfering with Zenimax's business plans while the deal was still in-process, but that never actually prevented them from negotiating deals for specific games in the same way companies like Sony could, while that stuff was still happening.

So these are all options worth keeping on the table as going-ons behind the scenes.
This is blatantly false. Nintendo and Sega were already on a moneyhat war stealing each other 3rd party exclusives.

Examples:
Street Fighter 1 (PCE), SF2 WW (SNES), SF2'CE (MD), SF2T (SNES), SSF2 (SNES+MD), SFA2 (SNES).
Final Fight (SNES), Final Fight CD (MD), Final Fight 2 and 3 (SNES).
Rocket Knight Adventures (MD), Sparkster (SNES), Sparkster: Rocket Knight Adventures 2 (MD).
And same with Castlevania, Contra and more.

Uh, this isn't exactly what you think it is. I did mention in one of my earlier posts that we could trace a lot of the lineage of these business practices back to Nintendo, after all. At that time I just mentioned their strict licensing contracts, and you should keep that in mind when talking about those other games, too. Or at least some of them. The reasons why companies like Namco had to create spin-off branches to publish on non-Nintendo systems was due to those strict licensing agreements they got locked into with Nintendo.

However, pointing to games like Castlevania and Contra is kind of against your point, because you're ignoring the fact that Nintendo's market presence at that time drew a lot of assumed support from many 3Ps, especially Japanese ones, who just naturally put a lot of their bigger teams on titles for the Nintendo platforms. That plus the large architectural differences between SNES and MegaDrive meant that most teams ruled out straight ports, instead choosing to develop unique versions of games for both platforms.

And that happened A LOT that gen; it also explains the Castlevania and Contra examples you allude to. Now the only one from your list there that I know for a fact involved straight-up moneyhatting were two of the versions of SF2, because Nintendo did it with the vanilla version and Sega did it with one of the later editions. SFA2 AFAIK wasn't a moneyhat; maybe Modern Vintage Gamer's video has more to shed on that I'm not aware of, but to me that was mainly a lower-cost version of the game made to appease players who hadn't yet jumped into the 5th-gen systems. And, IIRC it was also made mainly for Japan, where SNES dominated, and MegaDrive was a distant 3rd while ALSO being an extremely late release, 1996, by which point Sega had already discontinued everything that wasn't the Saturn, meaning less incentive to do a MegaDrive port of that game.

Rocket Knight Adventure actually came out before Sparkster, and I don't believe RKA was a moneyhat from Sega because RKA was specifically made for the MegaDrive. Sparkster went to both platforms, with some design differences between the two. For that to fit your moneyhatting narrative, either the release order of the games would've had to be different and Nintendo would've had to buy timed/full exclusivity for the sequel, or Sega would've had to buy timed or full exclusivity for the sequel or original game (if it even ever had a SNES version in development, which it didn't). Neither of those things happened.
 
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nemiroff

Gold Member
I have NOTHING against Raymond, and I'm sure this person is good at her job..s - perhaps even all of them, kinda hard to keep track since she's been all over the place.. The thing is, when I posted on forums at the time when she raised to stardom no one really posted much of a meritocratic reason for why she deserved so much attention. So I didn't really get it. ..With that said, people were for some strange reason posting a LOT of pictures of her..
 
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reksveks

Member
I have NOTHING against Raymond, and I'm sure this person is good at her job..s - perhaps even all of them, kinda hard to keep track since she's been all over the place.. The thing is, when I posted on forums at the time when she raised to stardom no one really posted much of a meritocratic reason for why she deserved so much attention. So I didn't really get it. ..With that said, people were for some strange reason posting a LOT of pictures of her..
Do you know of many game producers? I would argue that there isn't a handful of producers that people know of
 
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yurinka

Member
How do YOU know that a 2018 SFV would've been the same as 2016 SFV content-wise? It's one thing it you think that would've been the case, but it's also very clear that SFV was rushed out the door in 2016 and Capcom Cup had a lot to do with that.
Because Yoshinori Ono, executive producer of the game and guy in charge of all the Capcom fighting games said so several times in interviews. Without Sony's money they would have been 2 years without developing the game, so it would have been released 2 years later (in 2018). 2 years with nobody working on the game doesn't add more content to the game because games aren't made with magic, they need a team to be working on them.

Btw the game was released on February and the Capcom Cup was in December, it had nothing to do with the game being rushed. And Capcom Cup existed since 2013, 3 years before releasing SFV.

Use google.

I don't think the issue is Capcom lacked the cash; it's more that they lacked a reason to invest what cash they had INTO the game's development. Yes the company was struggling somewhat financially at that time but they weren't literally on the brink. Considering SFIV was one of their highest-selling games 7th-gen, you don't think they'd of been able to justify funding for a sequel with their own cash?
Yes, Capcom lacked the cash to make all the games they wanted to make or at least this is what Capcom said multiple times so they focused their money on the best selling series (Monster Hunter and Resident Evil, sold better than SFIV that gen too as you can see in Capcom IR Platinum Titles page) so were going to leave SFV development for later. But Sony appeared and gave them the money they needed. Again, google it because they explained it several times in interviews.

No. We know they didn't sign it because Jim Ryan himself said in an interview around the time the intent for purchase was made, that he didn't know if Starfield was coming to PS5. You can argue he was putting on theatrics, but Jim doesn't strike me as that kind of guy.
In game development we have NDAs. There is stuff that must be kept secret until publicly announced or you get in serious trouble. If someone asks you if that game exists or will be released in some place or when it's going to be released you must say you don't know nothing about it even if you know it. You can't reveal company secrets just because a random journalist ask you about it. They were negotiating its timed exclusivity, signed 2 timed exclusivity of the previous games of that company and the game will be one of the best sellers of that year and is coming from a big developer. Of course he knows if it will be released on PS5, the game's release date and if the game has a timed console exclusivity or not.

There is also another game that would fit your speculations that isn't Starfield: Indiana Jones. Why? Because LucasArts Games is handling the publishing, IIRC. They're doing their own thing, so there is probably a PS5 version of that around.
LucasArts Games doesn't exist, so they won't publish, develop or port games. They have Lucasfilm Games, which is a Disney licensing brand for future Star Wars and Indiana Jones titles. The Indiana Jones game will be developed and published by Bethesda, and the Ubisoft Star Wars game will be developed and published by Ubisoft. In the same way Jedi Fallen Order or Squadrons were developed and published by EA.

Bethesda/Zenimax/Microsoft would have decided with Disney/Lucasfilm (who as licensor has the last word to decide where their game gets released) the platforms where the Indy game will release. If you ask me where, I bet on PS5, Xbox and PC. Disney didn't care about making Spider-Man games exclusive, but Sony has a way bigger market share, sells more games and doesn't put them on a game subscription day one.

The same goes for Starfield, as Microsoft & Bethesda did some announcement for a character creation contest for that game a few weeks ago. Now, you COULD argue that, hey, maybe that's just because Microsoft may have marketing rights and that's the extent of it. This is a logical point of speculation. However, seeing as how Microsoft also owns the company with the dev studios making those games, they could have just as easily negotiated timed exclusivity deals for one or both before the September announcement, or even after it. Microsoft may've been legally barred from interfering with Zenimax's business plans while the deal was still in-process, but that never actually prevented them from negotiating deals for specific games in the same way companies like Sony could, while that stuff was still happening.
A $7.5B purchase isn't made in two days. They must have been negotiating it during at least months, talking about both roadmaps for the next several years, plans for the future and so on. Regarding to release whatever games they need to release on PS, MS doesn't care. In the same way they released today a Doom DLC, and in the past released several Minecraft games and DLC, or will release Psyconauts 2, and future Elder Scrolls Online or Fallout 76 DLC on PlayStation, MS knows they made a huge investment to get this money back, so if around 1.5 Billion games have been sold for PS4 it would be a bit stupid to avoid all that PS4 revenue just to make a few fanboys happy.

Instead compensating with a ton of money Sony, Disney, Nintendo or whoever else more who maybe had a pending deal for releasing Zenimax/Bethesda games or DLCs outside MS platforms, for sure MS will prefer to honor these deals and to release these games there because obviously they will prefer to have way bigger revenue than way smaller revenue plus to pay very expensive compensations.

Regarding 16 bit money hats and 1st partys angry because 3rd parties made some exclusive to the other and they wanted one for them there are several interviews (I remember now a couple to Capcom staff about the SF2 series).
 
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mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
The last two words of this message are Jade Raymond's actual contribution to Assassin's Creed series.

J7jIiAI.jpg

You're weird.
 

ItsTheNew

I believe any game made before 1997 is "essentially cave man art."
Very disappointing. Jade Raymond is just a name and has produced incredibly little of value to the industry. Sad to see Sony just going this route TBH. Given her recent track record I'd be willing to put money on her leaving the company before any game has been shipped.
Is there a way to pin this reply immediately after the OP? This is literally what's going to happen a year before the straight to ps+ quality game arrives.
 

longdi

Banned
This shows why Sony closing Japan studio is bullshit and mainly politicial. Jade Raymond? Seriously? Who gives a fuck. She's never created anything, she's just a manager. Sony funds her new studio who has nothing, but just becaues it's headed by women its given funding. You gotta be blind not to see the double standards.

Yes exactly, feels like racial discrimination. Now that Jimbo and Herman are running the show. ...

Imo they should have given the budget to their own existing SCEJ and let them make whatever creative games they wanted.

If you say that SCEJ has poor sales output and deserves the axe, then what about Jade Raymond? What kind of game is this Haven doing?
 

Loope

Member
You're saying alot of extra nothing for a simple concept.

Sony has yet to buy a 3rd party developer or publisher. The developers they bought have worked with them already for years. After a few successful games Sony decides to buy them and bring them into their first party to expand them further and make new IP's. Out of these studio purchases and expansion you get other areas of growth like support studios. Xdev, ICE team, and Visual Arts Service Group. The latter Which has now opened another studio in Malaysia.

Now we are seeing this same type of strategy with this new studio, Haven. If it proves a success Sony then might buy them.

This is what Sony calls organic growth.


MS has been buying 3rd party multiplatform developers that have established games on every platform. All they've been doing is removing access to other consoles.


They. Are. Not. The. Same. Thing.
Yes.it.is.They.did.it.before.with.Sega.and.Nintendo.Resume.good.guy.Sony.
 
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