He was the head of Guerrilla when they decided to abandon Killzone and move on to Horizon Zero Dawn, so, yes.
Hermen visiting future first party playstation FPS studio
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Since the moment Bungie left MS and became independent they partnered with Sony in both Destiny and Destiny 2 even if the games weren't exclusive. But yes: Square Enix, Capcom, ARC System Works, From Software or Kadokawa would be more organic.
But well, they never said that all their acquisitions were going to be organic, even if they are growing all their existing teams and that most of their acquisitions have been organic. They meant that it was going to be their main type of growth, and it has been that way.
I think it's fair to assume that in their deal with Deviation (we don't know if it's for a game or if they already signed more) Sony must have clauses forcing them to release all that, which pretty much avoids someone else buying them and stopping the deal. Who knows, maybe they even have a clause stating that their company can't be sold to someone else until they release whatever they agreed, or maybe even may have signed something mentioning that depending on the game evolution and results Sony could have an preference to acquire the studio if they desire to do so. Who knows.
For all the games he greenlighted an we know their genre (TLOU2 MP game, Spider-Man 2, Wolverine, Bend's next new IP, MLB 22/23, Team Asobi's next game, Death Stranding 2, Haven's first game), none of them are FPS. He also said to be proud of smaller and unique games like Death Stranding, Dreams, Sackboy, Astro etc. and that they'll do more of that type.
We don't know if any PS Studios team is working in any FPS game, even if it's fair to assume that one or two of the projects from Firewalk, Deviation, Guerrilla or London may be a fps game.
Haven is mostly people who created IPs like AC or Watchdogs breaking hystorical sales records for a new IP (including all the ones made by Sony or Nintendo) or in super successful games like Rainbow Six Siege an a ton more. They are more than proven and now under Sony they won't have morons on top of them making dumb decisions as happened in EA or Google.
Later The Division broke these records but about the same time Destiny debuted outperforming The Division and the other Ubi ones.
100% agree, I think it's smarter to acquire people who already worked for them in exclusives, or at least that know them from many years ago and had other kind of deals (like marketing+bundles+betas ones).
Hermen's work is to manage and overview PS Studios, so it's normal to see him meeting the teams that develop the games published by PS Studios to overview their progress. There is nothing special on seeing him visiting a dev who is making a 2nd party game for PS Studios, it's part of his job.
Greg Rice doesn't work for PS Studios or for Sony's 1st and 2nd party games. He works in Yoshida's team, helping and supporting -3rd party, not published by Sony- indies.
When there are bosses visiting a dev's office typically they go with him to have dinner or stuff like that. He may join some random team building activity teams do outside work time as it could be these soccer matches. In a studio where I did work we had a summer, Christmas and Halloween company parties with dinner or lunch and other activities, and during the year there were other activities like soccer, poker, climbing, wine tasting, cooking lessons with a chef, hiking, karting, cinema and more for whoever in the studio wanted to join it. Many of use also shared afterworks beers typically Fridays (often joining other gamedev studios from the same city), which oftne ended having lunch or clubbing.
Quite often when we had people from HQ or other studios visiting us they joined us in these activities. I have friends who developed relatively small 2nd party games for Sony, in an European studio known for having cool Summer and Christmas company parties. It was pretty common to see top SCEE and SCE Japan staff (some of them who didn't even work in the games of that studio) joining these parties just because they knew that studio was a friend of theirs and made good parties. For Sony 2nd party teams even if not acquired are "part of their family" for everything.
Yes, they are confirmed to be working on a PS Studios games, meaning that this game won't be released on Xbox or Switch. Who knows, maybe in 4 or 5 years or so from now, once they release this game they decide to do next a Switch or Xbox exclusive and they may change their decoration. Many big studios change the office decoration every few years.
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It actually turns out motion capture started a year ago and they are finishing up now. Deviations game is probably further along than I thought
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