Buying a no-name studio to make more Live-Service games. It's sad but that's Sony's strategy right now. They can't compete with Microsoft anymore because they barely have any money, so they are buying no-name studios while Microsoft buys publishers.
I guess Lucid Games will be next for more Destruction AllStars.
You that are a fan of new IPs, the people of this no-name studio did work in the creation of new IPs like Assassin's Creed, Watchdogs or The Division which got records of best selling new IPs ever in the gaming industry at different points, in some cases outsold in that record by Destiny, whose creators are also being acquired by Sony. A few top Destiny creators more left to create a new studio and are making a 2nd party game for Sony as their first title.
They also did work on several entries of top selling IPs including their -at least back then- best selling chapters as in Far Cry, Rainbow Six or Splinter Cell to name a few.
They destroy Microsoft in revenue from gaming, profit from gaming, console sales, amount of active consoles, total game sales for their consoles, game subscriptions or 1st party game sales, amount of exclusives games released per year, and their reviews and awards. Sony is the market leader in many gaming ares and MS in none of them, they are the 3rd in consoles. Sony isn't worried by MS at all.
Unlike MS they release every generation a huge amount of top selling new IPs, so they don't need to buy popular IPs (which in many cases of the MS purchased ones were popular many years ago but not anymore and most of their top creators aren't there anymore). Sony instead prefers to buy talent who knows to create and develop very successful IPs, not names and prestige because they already have them.
And like MS, Sony is increasing their bet in GaaS games. But unlike MS, Sony is also increasing their bet in non-GaaS games and keeping some of their top IPs outside GaaS.
Am I correct in saying that, while they do have a game which is being built around its apparent ease of use, Sony mainly bought Haven for its understanding of cloud tech? They're not necessarily making a cloud game but using the technology for easier development?
Bought them because they have a super experienced and talented team worked in several of the best selling new IPs ever in the gaming industry in addition to in a ton of super seller AAA games. And did it being very productive teams that grew fast, developed their games fast and were able to work in many projects at the same time.
In addition to this, the team also has a long tradition of being top tier regarding innovation and R&D. In the particular case of Jade Raymond, even before joining Ubisoft she started in gaming as programmer, team leader of R&D in Sony Online Entertainment and later was the producer of Sims Online, a super successful online game when the online games still weren't a mainstream thing.
They are not making a cloud game. The thing is that they are creating a framework, game engine, toolset where basically all the apps/tools and files they use to work developing games are in the cloud inside a single unified solution (many teams also have cloud based solutions but many different ones for different things -like one for renders, other to compile builds, other to save versions of the code, other for chats and video, other to transfer files...-, causing different issues than if it's a single integrated package that works in the same way for the whole team).
This makes them way easier to work remotely and also highly increases the productivity of the team because in game development it's needed to constantly download or upload huge files, share them with other people, there are compatibility issues if that coworker who shared the file doesn't have same program or version than you etc. plus they alre also constantly compiling new versions of the game, or making renders for videos or illustrations that when done localy take a fair amount of time but in the cloud are way faster. Many of these issues get solved or highly reduced when done in the cloud and when the whole team is using the same app/version/etc.
This allowed them to progress in their game faster than Sony expected and raised the attention of people like Hermen Hulst or Mark Cerny due to being very innovative, and interesting concept for the rest of the developers who could also see improved their productivity with this, or at least a similar approach.
Sony shares best practices, knowledge, tools, techniques and other stuff between their different 1st party and main 2nd teams. So game development improvements and innovations created by one of their teams later can be used by other teams. In some cases they even open them to every single 3rd party developer who makes games for PlayStation.