It was a Sony studio from the start.
No, they bought it now. It was independent before, even if their first game was going to be published by Sony.
He has 9,287 Followers... that alone already says a lot.
For any article about Désilets you can find 20 about Jade Raymond. And they are not even in the same league of interest: again... she is a *producer*. How many articles about producers you usally see around?
It's pretty interesting how Jade gets all the credit for Assassins creed while the actual director is completely unknown and has only gotten shit on by the industry since its release. She was a producer, which in the western game industry is a spreadsheet monkey who manages other peoples schedules. She was probably a great producer and now a good business head but I see no reason to get excited from a creative standpoint.
After the Assassin's Creed where they both worked on, he only released a game about monkeys. She (and her teams) instead worked on many super hits like the first two Watchdogs, Spliter Cell Blacklist, The Division, more AC like Black Flag or Unity, some Far Cry, Rainbow Six Siege, Star Wars Squadrons and many more, plus EA hired her to create and lead a studio and Google hired her as VP to be in charge of the Stadia in-house games, and later she created a studio that got a 2nd party game that now Sony bought.
It's easy to see why she generated more articles and got more attention, and isn't to be hot. She -Patrice's boss, since the producer manages the development team and the creative director is part of it- has been way more successful, in way more games and with different key companies. And not only as producer, later she was promoted to executive producer responsible of New IPs (you may heard of The Division or Watchdogs) and studio manager, where she had other tasks and was also super successful.
She build Ubisoft Toronto from scratch and quickly turned it into the 2nd biggest Ubisoft studio and probably the 1st or 2nd most successful and productive one. Which was her task, not to be some creative mastermind behind their AAA games, role that doesn't exist. Later she got hired by EA to build and lead a new AAA studio. She did it in a record time, brought with her many talent from Ubisoft plus other AAA studios including top people like Amy Hennig. EA went crazy with their lootboxes and so on, killed the promising Amy Hennig Star Wars games and ruined the Star Wars Battlefront 2 game where Motive was working as support team (but not in the lootboxes etc. part), plus also made Star Wars Squadrons and greenlighted the Dead Space remake before she left.
Many people followed her to Google and hired other senior AAA talent with more key senior staff, where she was tasked as Google VP in charge of the in-house game development teams. Stadia underperformed and Google killed their internal development teams before they were able to release an internal team. Again, many people of her team followed her and hired more AAA senior talent (many of them from Ubi but also from other companies) to create a new studio and one of these ideas they had for Google became the project they are working on for Sony.
And well, many people don't know she started her game career at Sony Online Entertainment as lead coder in Jeopardy Online or Trivial Pursuit, where she got promoted to director of R&D but left to became the producer of The Sims Online when back then Sims was the best selling PC & EA game and to make an online version was something pretty innovative back then.
Patrice Désilets was and is a big name like Cory Barlog. His name was thrown around a ton in mid 2000's and on for him being primary mind behind Assassins creed and Prince of Persia series.
A producers role Is not to hire people or build a team either, its to make spreadsheets about work schedules and manage meetings.
It's pretty interesting how Jade gets all the credit for Assassins creed while the actual director is completely unknown and has only gotten shit on by the industry since its release. She was a producer, which in the western game industry is a spreadsheet monkey who manages other peoples schedules. She was probably a great producer and now a good business head but I see no reason to get excited from a creative standpoint.
AAA games aren't created by a person, they are created by a team with hundreds of people. Sometimes companies decide to put as 'PR star' their CEO, their creative director, their producer, their executive producer... and then people wrongfully label them as 'the creator of X game'.
Even at the top level of the game there is a team: there's the editorial team in the HQ that defines the vision of the company and the type of games they want to make, and overviews and greenlights each game and each milestone in terms of production, marketing and creative direction.
Under them in charge of a team there are 3 key people in charge of a project. The most important ones are the producer (in charge of the development of a game, managing its development budget and the development tasks, making sure the team reaches their milestones and to solve any development issue that may appear between departments in daily meetings and making sure everyone has something to do and what they need to work to make sure the development doesn't get stuck) and the product manager -who has on top a brand manager if it's an stablished series- (in charge of marketing and communications team of the game, also provides the inputs of what works and what doesn't in the market, market trends, previous entries in the series and/or in referrnce games or direct competition). The third is the creative director, in charge of the design and art of the game.
So on top of him or at the same level there were many people. And we also shouldn't forget that he didn't make the character design or concept art, that was made by concept artists. Same goes with the story or mechanics, there were other people to do that. He leaded them to achieve the creative vision agreeded with production, the product manager and the editorial team. A vision that got inputs from all of them plus from ideas of the people under them (concept artists, designers, writers, etc).
Every couple of weeks the product manager, producer and creative director reports the progress of the team to the editorial team who overviews and (almost always) greenlights each milestone, plus offering guidance, suggestions and ideas of needed (rarely something mandatory).
I did work at Ubisoft an was at these meetings. I did meet both Patrice and Jade personally (both super talented, each one on their area) but never worked with them.
She was put front and centre for assassins creed, this is not her fault.
She was the producer of the game, which means she was the one in charge of the development of the game. Which doesn't mean to be 'the creator' since there isn't a person who is 'the creator' (see above).
Yeah, it’s been awhile, but I don’t think she was ever out there doing self-promotional victory laps and going all “what’s got two thumbs and deserves all the credit for (game)? This gal, motherfucker!”
That was all decided by folks above her pay grade in some cynical attempt to juice a product by relying on the tried and trusted “sex sells” strategy. I’d wager you haven’t heard anything about her in 15 years because she hasn’t been actively mugging for the attention.
If you haven't heard about her job in 15 years is because you have no idea of what her job role was and what games her teams did. Plus a few that failed due to Google or EA issues not related to her or her team.
So they had a 2nd party relationship and now it's 1st party?
Yes, before it was an independent 3rd party studio that was developing a game that was going to be published by Sony (so a 2nd party game). Now Sony decided not only to fund and publish their game, they decided to buy the studio, which now will be a 1st party studio making a 1st party game.