-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
PlayStation acquires Haven, the new studio led by Jade Raymond
ManaByte
Gold Member
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
This game will fail - just a prediction.
Men_in_Boxes
Snake Oil Salesman
Way too much juice around it. Sony bought the studio because leadership was that impressed with the project. Now Mark Cerny is involved, and he strikes me as a free agent of sorts who works on what he wants. Plus, now other studios are taking a peak at what's going on over there.
This has once in a generation type game written all over it.
TaylorSwiftFan
Member
So the game has been in development for a year now, right?
FingerBang
Member
I just need to hear the magic word to really get excited:
N F T
N F T
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Another thread where people upset we only talk about Jade Raymond and not the team around her spend more time to talk about Jade Raymond than the team around her.
It is possible that they assembled a very good, closely knitted, veteran team + promising upstarts and are working on some very cool tech, processes and tools, they are using to solve some interesting current or future problems in a very novel way and Sony wants to make sure they allow them to pursue this in a strongly supported, Sony first, strategy.
It could be a Media Molecule, good purchase but did not expand their market as some may have been expecting, or a purchase like Naughty Dog / Insomniac / Sucker Punch (transformative). A bit early to call it, but they did attract personal involvement from Cerny and other Sony technical folks at high levels… soooooo…
It is possible that they assembled a very good, closely knitted, veteran team + promising upstarts and are working on some very cool tech, processes and tools, they are using to solve some interesting current or future problems in a very novel way and Sony wants to make sure they allow them to pursue this in a strongly supported, Sony first, strategy.
It could be a Media Molecule, good purchase but did not expand their market as some may have been expecting, or a purchase like Naughty Dog / Insomniac / Sucker Punch (transformative). A bit early to call it, but they did attract personal involvement from Cerny and other Sony technical folks at high levels… soooooo…
Shmunter
Member
Sony wouldn’t be backing this if there wasn’t some sauce there
nikolino840
Member
James Sawyer Ford
Gold Member
pasterpl
Member
So more r&d studio than actual game development
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
Sounds like they’ve created some dev CD/CI pipeline, and not an actual game.
You’re a game developer, show me your game please. I want to know what’s so special that Sony bought you outright without even making one game as a second party first, like they do with a lot of their other developers.
You’re a game developer, show me your game please. I want to know what’s so special that Sony bought you outright without even making one game as a second party first, like they do with a lot of their other developers.
I'll reserve judgement until I see it. Hopefully it's as hype as you are making it out to be.
remember_spinal
Banned
Its not more, they are doing both, most of the studio is working on the multiplayer game. They are building the multiplayer game as well as putting R&D into machine learning and cloud.
Team Asobi is also building a significant R&D department.
Last edited:
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
As always game media highlighting an hyper sexualised primadonna, white jumper, black shirt, and jeans… tsk tsk… architects have brains too Axios!
They also win the Seth Roger lookalike contest.
Seriously though, if they bought the studio for the tech and Cerny is so focused on it, it sounds like they hit the jackpot. Sony does focus on ensuring they have a very well run stable of studios overall.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
No.
I think that is a horrid idea. If its not ready, its not ready. I think we all want to know what Sony saw that made them buy them, but what they saw was likely a concept, something rough, something that isn't in its current state marketable, simply something Sony understands can work and can sell, doesn't mean show it to the general public.
Someone literally might understand some gameplay loop written on some napkin and think "wow, thats never been done"
Show the napkin in Twitter? That will sell it or? What Sony is sold on makes sense from a development and business standpoint, not from a public perception thing to show on social media lol That makes no sense and its best to let them get the game in a working state like a beta or something before showing anyone or even say nothing at all and show it off at release like APEX.
remember_spinal
Banned
I also trust Hermens judgement as he’s been involved with active game development before. He knows a good idea when he see’s one.
vaibhavpisal
Member
vivftp
Member
Based off of info we've gotten about Haven over the past few months it seems like they're also developing the ability for devs to do all their work in the cloud which leads to faster and more efficient productivity. It was suggested this could be something that could be used by other studios. My own random speculation is that this approach interests Cerny greatly and by the time the PS6 rolls around, all (or most) dev work for PlayStation will be done in the cloud for all studios, first and third party.
Haven had to build this approach out of necessity as they were formed during the pandemic, and I'm thinking that was one major contributing factor to Sony scooping them up so relatively early.
Haven had to build this approach out of necessity as they were formed during the pandemic, and I'm thinking that was one major contributing factor to Sony scooping them up so relatively early.
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
This is the same Herman who is remastering/remaking his 5 year old game. I need to see a bit more of Sonys first party this generation to make any judgements. But we are still very early and I have faith.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
? but Sony remastered games all the time before he took over, that isn't some thing he invented himself, so....stop repeating fucking "hottakes' man, put up the evidence to make a real post based on facts.
Consider prior to this we got a boat load of remasters on PS3, we literally got The Last Of Us remastered 1 year after release.
Ghost was remastered 1 year after release.
Yet suddenly people are making it sound like this brand new, rare, greedy trend has started that has swept the industry? Are you sure about that? This is just people trying to exaggerate something that has been a practice by Sony for decades, its why they are now making it sound like this is some brand new idea or something. So you would have saw some Horizon remaster even if he never was running PS now or something. Did we not see a Killzone remaster on PS3?
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
Man, you are the most aggressive Sony Defence Force poster on here these days. Any opportunity to defend them no matter how ridiculous the action they have taken.
I only play on PlayStation, PS5 is my only console. So every penny I spend on gaming they get some sort of cut. Is that good enough for you? Give it a break.
Take it easy and just enjoy yourself.
Last edited:
Frank Horrigan
Banned
Sony studios develop tech internally and share it externally with the wider team. Often, the AAA teams help out other teams when it comes to creating assets/coding. I thought this was common knowledge?
If Haven are building a technology that will reduce turn-around times for games and that tech can be applied across Playstation as a whole, then the studio is worth every penny, regardless of if they ever release a game
If Haven are building a technology that will reduce turn-around times for games and that tech can be applied across Playstation as a whole, then the studio is worth every penny, regardless of if they ever release a game
Bo_Hazem
Banned
Yeah cloud development has surfaced more especially after COVID-19 to avoid such a thing in the future that shackles developments. DaVinci Resolve Studio video editor also has cloud editing/sharing with colleagues where you can hire a colorist from overseas and other outsourcing pretty easily.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
lol thats not a "defense force" idea, that is telling you they've done this before, this is a normal practice for the publisher, Herman didn't start doing that...So that isn't defending its existence, its explaining it that it existed before Herman took over. Stop fucking forcing some warring shit into every thread man lol
So I think you are too much into this whole warrrrr thing and fall for hot takes for clickbait a bit too much man.
I'd tell you this if you told me some shit about Square doing remakes or remasters based on some new CEO. I'd just give you the factual evidence that such a concept isn't new to the publisher, some new CEO didn't start that concept....
Last edited:
Kenneth Haight
Gold Member
How did I force some “warring shit” in to this thread. I simply stated my opinion on it. Nothing more, nothing less.
Anyway we are off topic, you enjoy playing Horizon Zero Dawn again and paying for the privilege. I’m quite happy with the 60fps they gave us for free. Options are good.
We will see how Haven pan out, they must have something very special for Sony to purchase them.
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
...also you
This shit is off topic, it has nothing to do with the thread...
? I'm not buying the remaster...so, I think you take this shit too personally. You think the comment made is about me personally, you think the comment about Sony having a history of remasters and that Herman didn't start this is a "Sony defence force" thing and seem to be blinded by some rage man.
I'm not buying the fucking game and my comments are regarding Sony as a publisher. They have done remasters before, Herman didn't start doing remasters at Sony. I don't know what to tell you Kenneth, I may like Playstation, but the comments I'm making I'd make about any publisher that had a history of porting, remasters or remakes, thats like someone making it sound like Capcom making a remake for Resident Evil 4 is based on some new person at Capcom.
Soooooo nothing about facts or evidence or actual data to support the point, but I must be part of some secret force, buying it or something, ignore facts about that history? Do you not see how odd that might sound Kenneth when the point being made can be supported factually? So even if I bought it, that statement is true, if I never bought it...its still a true statement.
So I trust that Herman knows what he is doing and sees something in this team and I can't fault him for remasters or remakes when that has been part of the companies practices for decades. His job is after all to make money for Sony.
Tiago Rodrigues
Member
From all Sony studios the biggest mistery is this one to me, in a good way.
Sony wouldn't bet on them if what they were doing wasn't promissing. And Cerny seems to be working quite closely to them as well.
Sony wouldn't bet on them if what they were doing wasn't promissing. And Cerny seems to be working quite closely to them as well.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Where does it say that?
You do know that a studio can experiment with new tech while simultaneously developing a game, right?
Like, once your engine and tools programmers have finished building the core of the development tech, they will either sit around twiddling their thumbs or get to work developing new stuff to be implemented in current and/or future games.
AI developed games ?
Power of the cloud?
Don't be a ludite!
To be fair, cloud and AI tech used in game development aren't particularly new. But there are major opportunities for using cloud tech for stuff like pre-computing lighting (i.e. baking lighting data), as well as using AI for stuff like procedural generation of assets and environments.
Nah, his post was perfectly reasonable and you just seem absurdly and rather unnecessarily triggered.
Unless you actually do want to come across as a douche, you should probably consider refraining from making fanboy accusations because someone merely disagrees with you. People are entitled to have their own opinion and to disagree. That doesn't make them platform warriors/fanboys. Resorting to that crap just degrades discussion and brings down the overall quality level of discourse.
And ironically, it's often the people first to jump on making fanboy accusations that are the forum's biggest fanboys. Don't align yourself with that group, my dude.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
You are never finished, many of those programmers, if the solution is complex enough, will keep on working on it. Fixing bugs, refactoring code, planning new features, etc…
Sorry pet peeve of mine seeing checkboxes being ticked and nobody planning support and evolution of tech solutions (release, adopt, magic…, ?, profit!) in some corps :/.
yurinka
Member
A year and a half with Sony, but they started it before at Google.
Seems that what it's interesting about the team, in addition to the game itself (they pitched Sony 3 games and Sony wanted all 3, but decided to work only in 1 of them for now) is that they built a platform that works in the cloud which integrates everything (tools, communication apps, making builds, rendering, etc) devs need for developing.
Apparently this working environment isn't only perfect for remote work, but also skyrockets productivity due to several reasons. To the point that they are achieving their milestones faster than expected, which is super rare because the common case is the opposite: to need delays and extra time. Sony is interested on provide this tech to their other devs.
The AI doesn't develop games. One of the latest trends is to use AI to make placeholders of textures, meshes or even animations to help them make drafts or prototype ideas faster. Even for voice acting, to get an idea of lengths and prepare stuff later for motion capture or cutscene editing etc before the real voice acting with humans is introduced.
But the AI is only used as a base to make drafts. Later a proper human dev works on it iterating it rebuilding it, or using it as reference, polishing it etc.
The power of the cloud on Xbox was more the power of the smoke, they promised unrealistic things that couldn't be achieved like improving the game visuals or physics with the cloud on a shooter or open world game.
The Haven approach of using the cloud isn't inventing the wheel, what they did is something realistic and already done in a slightly different way: they moved all the tools used by devs to the cloud using an integrated solution common to all the team.
It's like if devs commonly were using MS Office and were manually uploading and downloading these docs to their internal servers, but Haven moved all their workers to Google Docs: being in the cloud all have the same program and version so there aren't compatibility issues and it's faster to share with each other big ass files and have many versions of them in the server. This idea but with absolutely all the tools gamedevs use to work and inside a single solution.
Plus also when compiling a new version or making a big rendering instead of making that compute offline they do it on a very powerful server farm, so times for things like to compile a new game build or rendering get way faster. So not only improve productivity, they now can perfectly work using a random weak laptop at home.
These things Haven does have been implemented separatedly during years, but seems they made an integrated solution with everything and tailored for gamedev.
They are a super experienced team mostly from Ubisoft (in particular the folks who built this tech), so they are very experienced on working with several teams remotely in big ass AAA games and knew how to approach, what to fix in their workflow and what to optimize.
Last edited:
EDMIX
Writes a lot, says very little
Considering all of Google's AI stuff, I can see how such a thing started there as we are starting to see some of that crazy AI stuff now
So its hard to say what the AI part actually is. It could be like enemy AI, like what if the NPC is learning your behavior, flanking differently etc They merely could be talking about other aspects like AI developing 3D models of things
yurinka
Member
Enemy AI is dumb and predictable in games by design, on purpose. To make the games not too hard, but instead fun and non frustrating.
Any coder could make enemies super smart who could kill you in 100% of the matches. But that wouldn't be fun, when playing you want to feel powerful, smart and have fun. So they make the enemies easier on purpose, and they don't use proper modern AI (as the ones we recently saw drawing stuff or learning to animate stuff) on them.
The AAA games being developed now use AI for other things. Mainly for texture, mesh, animation or audio placeholders, to have a quick draft placed in the game to allow another coworkers (designers, programmers) working in other stuff while proper human artists work on the final version of these visual or audio assets.
It's also being used for procedural generation of environments: in the past humans introduced some basic rules and man-made assets and computer generated stages were created by combining them or making them randomly following these rules, and then a human curated the results, iterated the rules and tried again until they got something they liked.
Now with the AI they basically do the same but the when the human says which results are good or bat the AI learns what of these results are good or bad and tries to find patterns on what was wrong and right. On top of that they also can feed the AI with photo or video references of what they want.
Zero_Karisma
Member
Is the guy on the right Mark Cerney or Garth from Wayne’s World?As always game media highlighting an hyper sexualised primadonna, white jumper, black shirt, and jeans… tsk tsk… architects have brains too Axios!
They also win the Seth Roger lookalike contest.
Seriously though, if they bought the studio for the tech and Cerny is so focused on it, it sounds like they hit the jackpot. Sony does focus on ensuring they have a very well run stable of studios overall.
Tarin02543
Member
I'm still waiting for her Stadia masterpiece.
They do reference that in the quotes and is what I am expecting.
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
No apologies are necessary. I was a little too imprecise with my wording, but this was essentially the point I was trying to make. Once there is an engine and toolchain utilisable for full production, the core tech group isn't just sitting around doing nothing.
I appreciate your educated input.
Does anyone know what the openai plus MS licensing deal is?
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/12...all-e-microsoft-designer-app-office-365-suite
This is kinda the tech that I am expecting Haven to be playing about with but obviously in another format/medium.
Ignore my question
It’s not clear if the tech giant has a similar license for using DALL-E.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/12...all-e-microsoft-designer-app-office-365-suite
This is kinda the tech that I am expecting Haven to be playing about with but obviously in another format/medium.
Ignore my question
It’s not clear if the tech giant has a similar license for using DALL-E.
Last edited:
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Going back to our discussion around UE5 being adopted by PS studios, isnt this studio essentially doing the same thing? Working on tools that will eventually be adopted by other Sony studios?UE5 is absolutely remarkable in how fast it lets devs create environments. We saw that 30 environments in 30 days trailer that was done by just 3 artists. Thats the future. I would hate to see every single Sony studio waste time building their own set of tools to get to that point when an amazing tool is available to them. And why because they dont want to give Epic a small cut for their profits? Is that really worth wasting half of this generation on last gen games?
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
UE5 is absolutely remarkable in how fast it lets devs create environments. We saw that 30 environments in 30 days trailer that was done by just 3 artists. Thats the future. I would hate to see every single Sony studio waste time building their own set of tools to get to that point when an amazing tool is available to them. And why because they dont want to give Epic a small cut for their profits? Is that really worth wasting half of this generation on last gen games?
The Epic royalty is not the only cost though, Slimy. We covered this in the previous discussion.
There is a MASSIVE resource, time and training cost to switching engines and toolchains. Sony, and by extension all first and third-party publishing platforms, need to determine whether the cost of switching, retraining, optimising and retooling UE5 to fit the individual studio's needs is greater than adding on the missing features from UE5 into their own codebase.
In the case of many of Sony's internal studios and many other third parties across the industry, I would guess the latter makes more sense for them.
The investment in development technologies like what Haven is doing is great because it's a cost you only pay it once, and the fruits of said endeavour can be leveraged indefinitely into the future.
I think you're massively underestimating the cost of studios switching from their own in-house developed engine and tools to Unreal Engine 5. It's not trivial at all. Look at what happened with Bioware starting from Dragon Age: Inquisition and basically every other EA dev that was forced to use Frostbite. The Dead Space studio got at least one project cancelled over it and eventually mostly dissolved.
UE5 is not some one-size-fits-all, turn-key solution, that can be used to make any kind of game without significant refactoring of the codebase. It's partly why Epic now makes the engine source code available; because studios forced to get deep into the engine code to make alterations cannot be reliant upon Epic for bug-fixing errors in the engine code.
Bo_Hazem
Banned
I think we might have a new juggernaut in the making like ND, GG, SSM, SP, and Insomniac Games. Not now, probably by the end of the generation.
Daneel Elijah
Member
I am not in the industry and I never used Unreal so don't take my criticism to heart but why do you think that Unreal have anything that Sony top studios do not have outside of maybe commotionality? Hideo Kojima choose to use the decima engine and not Unreal to make his first game as an independant and succeded. Insomniac Games have a crazy output and do so with their proprietary tools and engine(s). Sony top studios all have spend many years, some of them decades, to have the technology and organisation to give us games that basically have no concurrence outside of rare cases like Rockstar. And they should abandon all of that for what? Gain one month or 2 of development time? Have an easier time recruiting when they are already a prestige destination to work for? Would you ask Nintendo to go for Unreal too?
UE5 is absolutely remarkable in how fast it lets devs create environments. We saw that 30 environments in 30 days trailer that was done by just 3 artists. Thats the future. I would hate to see every single Sony studio waste time building their own set of tools to get to that point when an amazing tool is available to them. And why because they dont want to give Epic a small cut for their profits? Is that really worth wasting half of this generation on last gen games?
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
I know it's MP, but I hope like Destiny it still has a solid SP component or is co-op PvE as well as PvP.
Setting-wise, if it's a shooter, I hope it's Sci-Fi with pew pew lasers. Throw in vehicles and pilotable mecha and I will dump unholy piles of money on this mofo; provided it reviews well.
Whatever it is, I just hope it's not set in WWI/WWII.
Cyberpunkd
Member
How about Jade actually delivers something?
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
That's fair. I hope they know what they are doing like you think they do.
On topic, I remember a ND dev talking about how it took him 18 months to finish the Museum level in TLOU2. Thats a level with no combat encounters. One real building with two floors and maybe 3-4 large rooms and it took 18 months to iterate and complete. ND actually finished that game in under 3 years despite the hack, the reshoots and delays so they are very productive. I just thought it was interesting just how much iteration every level takes. Thats manual intervention after notes from directors and play testers. I dont know how AI is going to reduce that iteration time, but Metro devs have talked about how using realtime GI has saved them a lot of time that wouldve otherwise been spent on baking lighting and we all know what nanite can do for creating 10 different LODs for every object in the game. I hope Sony devs switch to these realtime GI and reflections next gen for the sake of reducing dev time even if it means a bigger hit on the GPU.
Bo_Hazem
Banned
She delivered AC1 which is still ahead of its time back then, with impressive attention to details up until it lift Ubisoft.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
I covered this in the other thread, but the reason why I think they dont have anything equivalent to UE5 is because its been 2 years and we havent seen a single Sony game come even remotely close to Epic's UE5 demos. The first of which was released over 2.5 years ago. First party studios typically get first dibs on devkits and we know devkits were sent out in April 2019. In almost 4 years, we havent seen anything from Sony that looks as good as UE4 demos from 2019 like Rebirth. Hell, Unity's Enemies demo and the lion demo which runs on a PS5 looks three generations ahead of what sony studios have produced this gen. And that includes, Ratchet, Demon Souls, TLOU and Returnal.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
That was Patrice. Jade was a producer. She's Joel Silver to the Wachowskis. Or a rando WB exec to Nolan.
I bet we dont even know the producers over at Naughty Dog. Just directors like Neil and Amy Henning because they are the ones responsible for the actual game. Shes just incharge of ensuring the games release on time.
Last edited: