I simply do not understand the continued hype and enthusiasm for Jade Raymond. Has she done anything significant since the first Assassin's Creed? Seems like she just keeps joining new studios and leaving before anything gets released.
After she was a successful producer with the first AC games and DLCs, plus started Watchdogs and The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot she was tasked on to build and lead Ubisoft Toronto, which was very successful and became the 2nd biggest Ubisoft studio. They did work (in collaboration with other Ubi studios) in the first couple of Watchdog games, Splinter Cell Blacklist, Far Cry 4 and Primal, Rainbow Six Siege, The Division, For Honor, several other AC games and DLCs and more.
Then she left to create a new studio for EA to make the Amy Hening Star Wars but EA was too EA, shutted down the game and put them to help into Battlefront 2, a game also ruined because EA was being too EA. Her studio made Star Wars Squadrons.
Then Google hired her as vice president to be the head of Google's Studios, a team who would make exclusive games for Stadia. Google decided to shut down the team before they released any internal game and as I remember only released Gylt (3rd party exclusive made by Tequila Works, the Rime guys) and maybe some other small game.
Now she created an independent studio with experienced former coworkers (I assume people from Ubi, EA and Google) whose first game seems will be for Sony (we don't know if as a 2nd party game, a full 3rd party exclusive, a full console exclusive, a timed console exclusive or just a multi game with a marketing deal).
Did she create the concept of Assassin's Creed or did she just manage the team that made it? In any case, Assassin's Creed wasn't a breakthrough success for Ubisoft until AC2 released.
Games, and game concepts, aren't created by a single person. They are created by a team. In the case of AAA games like AC, by a huge team. In Ubisoft, like in basically any AAA company, the games are leaded by 2 persons. The producer, who is the one in charge of the game development part (game designers, artists, programmers, composers/audio designers, testers...). And the product manager or brand manager, who the person in charge of the marketing and communications part (market research, trailers, ads, PR, CM, etc). She was the producer of the first few AC games and DLCs, and then she was promoted to be the studio boss of one of the studios who did work on more AC games and other games.
And well, AC2 existed because AC was a big success even if they had several issues back then with the new next gen technology and open world concept plus unfocused vision from the creative director (AC1 was supposed to be a Prince of Persia game but it ended being too different of the original idea so they decided to rework it and rebrand it as a new IP).
If yesterday's rumors from Jez Corden are true, Microsoft already has a handful of exclusive games being made by 3rd party devs. It's just a matter of time before they start announcing these collaborations. I wouldn't expect to be playing any of these games for another 3+ years though unfortunately.
I highly doubt Microsoft would pay for big 3rd party exclusives when they decide to make some of their own games not even full console exclusives. If this is true, maybe it's only some small indies.
Honestly Microsoft has great opportunity to Fuck Sony's Jimbo and Hermen right now, Microsoft can put Gamepass into their butthole but if they make a deal with Sega new Virtua Fighter and then another deal with Kojima, and also why not deal with Techmo for Ninja gaiden 4 (Ninja Gaiden 1 was the game that made me love and respect Xbox back then), i'm speaking for me but this is instant gonna make Xbox so much appealing and a must have. PS5 will still have musts like GOW2, FF16 and FF7, but i want to see variety and not just the following of the 10 millions sold PS4 blockbusters AAA.
I wish MS would do that so we'll have real competition and Sony will wake up, that would be the same MS of 360 era. But MS may just keep pushing for MUH GAMEPASS MUH, but i wouldn't mind if they change their tune for once though.
Just wait for this Wednesday
The team was made by Google years ago. Sony simply offered them an exclusivity deal after Google packed it's bags and left everyone stranded. There's nothing "built from the ground up" about this scenario LOL.
We don't know if this team has any other former Google employee other than Jade. And we don't know if Haven's first project is something rehashed from Google or if they started to create it totally from scratch outside Google.
So did you feel the same way when Street Fighter V became a PS4/PC exclusive? Because the common talking point thrown out there is that Sony helped co-fund development and helped sponsor Capcom Cup but...no one seriously believes Capcom was not going to develop a follow-up to SF4. It may've not come out in 2016 but in hindsight a delay would've been for the better.
Sony has a history of signing exclusive contracts for new entries in games that were once multi-plat that goes back to the PS1. I'm not saying this stuff is ethically wrong; it's just business. But the people trying to frame it as an ethical argument to say why one is good and the other is bad, or try saying Microsoft purchasing Zenimax is "wrong", don't seem to understand how the world of business doesn't care about petulant console war-esque bantering.
Back then Capcom was in financial troubles so they signed several exclusivity deals with Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo to get some cash. In the case of Sony, they did choose Street Fighter. Sony funded and outsourced the PS4 USFIV port, put money for the Capcom Pro Tour eSports and partially funded SFV in exchange on full console exclusivity for SFV series and 'next gen exclusivity of USFIV'.
According to Capcom, SFV development would have been delayed a couple of years because they didn''t have money to fund it. This is, development start would have started a couple of years later and its release would have been in 2018. Thanks to Sony's money they were able to start working on it and to release it earlier. Without Sony the game release would have been the same but 2 years later and multiplatform.
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