Sony acquires Haven Studios

[the-pi-guy]

Excited to officially welcome @HavenStudiosinc to PlayStation Studios! Super impressed by @ibjade and her talented team, and their vision for an original multiplayer game for PlayStation. Congrats to everyone at Haven! pic.twitter.com/EjWFbh1HEc

— Hermen Hulst (@hermenhulst) March 21, 2022

[the-pi-guy]

Message from Jade Raymond on the acquisitionhttps://t.co/M0Row7EDsH pic.twitter.com/jyZpSRyqI3

— Nibel (@Nibellion) March 21, 2022

[BananaKing]

dang... that was fast... they must be really happy with what they are seeing.

Hopefully this means an announcement soon

They are working on a live service game. But we knew that already. Sony investing heavily in live service devs.

Who is next? Deviation games seems like a huge candidate.

It seems sonys approach to this aquisition war is to buy devs, and expand their studio based on specific needs


My prediction, deviation is next, then fromsoftware.

[nnodley]

Very nice. I love them investing more in new up and coming studios rather than buying all the big publishers up.

Lookin at you Microsoft  

[the-pi-guy]

First Canadian studio for PlayStation

Also makes the 7th studio, they've purchased in the past year.

"It's just easier for us to invest in the team and game more deeply this way. It is testament to the fact we've been very impressed with the progress that Haven has made. They're actually exceeding a lot of the plans, including in terms of time, which very rarely happens in game development, let me tell you. So we thought: Let's invest deeply and do this properly."

Canada is one of the biggest producers of AAA games in the world. Most major games companies have a presence in the country, including Activision Blizzard, EA, Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, Square Enix, Tencent, Take-Two and Ubisoft. It's actually a surprise to realise that PlayStation wasn't among them.

She adds: "PlayStation has its own unique secret sauce to getting to those amazing games. It's not by chance that you see so many 90+ blockbusters [from Sony]. It's because they do something a little differently, and that's been the thing that we've experienced over the last year."

Gamesindustry

[the-pi-guy]

This is exactly why I loved working for @ibjade. Her big value at Motive was "honesty," and it led to greater transparency in all directions.

Pursuing KINDNESS with the same rigor tells me Haven is a very promising place to work. And they've already hired brilliant people. https://t.co/dMEOvZZwSr pic.twitter.com/rciXW8JblI

— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) October 8, 2021

[kitler53]

wow.   not surprised at the acquisition but i am surprised it came even before their game was announced.      i figured they'd at least wait to see the response on social media to the new game before committing.

so deviation is next?  another obvious pick up.

[the-pi-guy]

so deviation is next?  another obvious pick up.

- Deviation Games seems incredibly likely. Kind of seems like they're setting it up here, with talk about Canadian talent, and Deviation Games having a Canadian studio opening.

- Firewalk is the third studio that has a similar thing as Haven/Deviation Games. Although they're in a different kind of position. They're part of a group of 3 studios. Someone hypothesized on Era, that the group is kind of a studio farm. Sell the studio out, and make some money off it. So maybe they would buy 0 of the studios, or buy 1, or buy all 3. Who knows.

- Arrowhead Games is a small likely one, probably. They made Helldivers with SIE, and it sounds like they're making Helldivers 2 with SIE as well.

- Lucid Games probably not though? Their games haven't done amazing, but they still seem to be getting support by Sony.

And I'm sure there will be something that makes no sense.

[the-pi-guy]

Polyphony Digital	1998
Santa Monica Studio	1999
Bend Studio	2000
Naughty Dog	2001
San Diego Studio	2001
London Studio	2002
Guerrilla Games	2005
Media Molecule	2010
Sucker Punch	2011
Pixelopus	2014
Insomniac Games	2019
Team Asobi	2021
Housemarque	2021
Nixxes Software	2021
Firesprite	2021
Bluepoint Games	2021
Valkyrie Entertainment	2021
Haven Studios	2022

[kitler53]

- Deviation Games seems incredibly likely. Kind of seems like they're setting it up here, with talk about Canadian talent, and Deviation Games having a Canadian studio opening.

- Firewalk is the third studio that has a similar thing as Haven/Deviation Games. Although they're in a different kind of position. They're part of a group of 3 studios. Someone hypothesized on Era, that the group is kind of a studio farm. Sell the studio out, and make some money off it. So maybe they would buy 0 of the studios, or buy 1, or buy all 3. Who knows.

- Arrowhead Games is a small likely one, probably. They made Helldivers with SIE, and it sounds like they're making Helldivers 2 with SIE as well.

- Lucid Games probably not though? Their games haven't done amazing, but they still seem to be getting support by Sony.

And I'm sure there will be something that makes no sense.

if sony is looking to bolster their studios i think lucid is still at least "probable".    destruction all-stars was well made even if it didn't do well.   having played it i don't think it was a bad game.   the premise wasn't great but trying to release DSA as a multiplayer, "launch window", next-gen exclusive, $70 retail game instead of as a cross-gen, f2p, live service game was what killed it.

we'll see how twisted metal goes but if the business model isn't completely broken again i have faith they can make a good game.   DSA was very fluid and pretty and the net-code seemed top notch to me.   i came to the game late and the absolute worst part of the game for me was the long match-making times for what was clearly a game with low population.

Polyphony Digital	1998
Santa Monica Studio	1999
Bend Studio	2000
Naughty Dog	2001
San Diego Studio	2001
London Studio	2002
Guerrilla Games	2005
Media Molecule	2010
Sucker Punch	2011
Pixelopus	2014
Insomniac Games	2019
Team Asobi	2021
Housemarque	2021
Nixxes Software	2021
Firesprite	2021
Bluepoint Games	2021
Valkyrie Entertainment	2021
Haven Studios	2022

seems unfair to include team asobi since it was made from the ashes of studio japan.

[kitler53]

last comment i swear...


....i don't know what sony paid for jade's studio but i'm confident it was much much less than the ~$5 billion dollars of ubisoft's current market cap.  with all the failures and rumors about ubisoft i'll say sony took (..and will probably continue to take via recruiting) the best of ubisoft for a next to nothing investment.  

[BananaKing]

You also forgot bungie

Its crazy to compare the PS4 gen to the PS5 gen when it comes to aquisitions and new studios. During the PS4 gen they just made a new small studio consisting of a handful of devs, and bought insomniace which they worked with for almost 20 years. PS5 gen is just less than 2 years in and already 7 studios bought

Shu and hulst's approaches are showing how different they are. Shu wanted to expand their first party devs and have them have multiple teams, which honestly didn't really pan out.

Hulst is focusing on acquiring talent in a strategic manner. But he is taking some risks here too, usually Sony buys a studio after it find success with it and releasing games. Here hulst bought haven and firespirte before they released anything together. Means they probably bought them for much cheaper though.  Housemarque also said sony also wanted to buy them before retournal even released. (If I remember correctly)

It will be interesting to see what happens next. I am gonna take the relatively safe bet and say deviation is next.

[the-pi-guy]

You also forgot bungie

Technically from what I understand Bungie will be parallel to PlayStation studios.

Its crazy to compare the PS4 gen to the PS5 gen when it comes to aquisitions and new studios. During the PS4 gen they just made a new small studio consisting of a handful of devs, and bought insomniace which they worked with for almost 20 years. PS5 gen is just less than 2 years in and already 7 studios bought

Shu and hulst's approaches are showing how different they are. Shu wanted to expand their first party devs and have them have multiple teams, which honestly didn't really pan out.

I mean they're currently doing a lot of both.  
Santa Monica has 2 teams.
Geurilla has 2.5 teams.
Firesprite has 3.5 teams.
Naughty Dog seems to have 3 teams.
Insomniac has at least 3 teams.

[BananaKing]

Technically from what I understand Bungie will be parallel to PlayStation studios.
I mean they're currently doing a lot of both.  
Santa Monica has 2 teams.
Geurilla has 2.5 teams.
Firesprite has 3.5 teams.
Naughty Dog seems to have 3 teams.
Insomniac has at least 3 teams.

Naughty dog admitted while they can have multiple projects at the same time. They dont have 2 full teams working simultaneously.

SSMs original expansion into 2 teams failed and ended with a cancelled project. They reverted to a 1 team studio. Now they have 2 projects in the works, but we arent sure of they are 2 full teams or not.

GG was more successful, but then they reverted for a 1 team studio for a while, now rumors are they have 2 teams, but we will see

Firespirte and insomniace are new aquisitions and weren't there during the shu era.

[the-pi-guy]

Naughty dog admitted while they can have multiple projects at the same time. They dont have 2 full teams working simultaneously.

SSMs original expansion into 2 teams failed and ended with a cancelled project. They reverted to a 1 team studio. Now they have 2 projects in the works, but we arent sure of they are 2 full teams or not.

GG was more successful, but then they reverted for a 1 team studio for a while, now rumors are they have 2 teams, but we will see

It feels like they are trying at least.

We will have to see how successful it is.  

Naughty Dog has been hiring a lot of people in the past year for assisting with project management. It seems like they are giving multiple teams a bigger go this gen. Of course it's totally possible they aren't there yet.  

I admit though I have not heard the same kind of push at Santa Monica, so harder to say where they are at. But considering that they're teasing it already, leads me to believe it must be fairly in the works.  

And Geurilla, well depending on how you count it, they've had Call of the Mountain in development with Firesprite since 2018 I believe. So kind of 1.5 teams there for the past 4 years.  
Shinobi made a post that he expected Geurilla to be the first studio with 500 people, and that they have a lot in the works.  

So I'm inclined to believe that there's a lot going on.