Sony Possibly Building New Studio Of Ex-Deviation Games Talent.

Remember_Spinal

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im always weary of those start ups that post them on vacation or having parties or some other company event thing before we see what they’re actually making.

Isn’t it funny how we don’t see any of that from Firewalk, Firesprite, or Haven?
 
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Yurinka

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im always weary of those start ups that post them on vacation or having parties or some other company event thing before we see what they’re actually making.

Isn’t it funny how we don’t see any of that from Firewalk, Firesprite, or Haven?
These activities are team building activities that most big companies/studios do, but often once or twice per year. Typically the same day they do a Christmas/Summer dinner organized and paid by the studio, where all the staff participates (the ones who want to go).

They often also have afterworks activities paid by the company with groups of coworkers. Stuff like going to see some movie in the cinema, have some beers, cooking lessons, language lessons, poker, airsoft, gym, football / beach volley /etc matches, and way more. Basically random activities that some coworkers decide to do together and organize themselves, and the company only funds at least part of it.

These things are normally kept more or less private, or sometimes show it on their social media. Deviation is a rare case where they put it on their website.

Anyway. I wonder the future of CoD after these departures.
ABK has a gazillion people and studios working on CoD including many talented and experienced people, like the Infinity Ward folks. These folks who left are only a very small part of the CoD staff, I think CoD will be fine. Specially once they release Warzone Mobile.
 
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Aidendelaney95

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These activities are team building activities that most big companies/studios do, but often once or twice per year. Typically the same day they do a Christmas/Summer dinner organized and paid by the studio, where all the staff participates (the ones who want to go).

They often also have afterworks activities paid by the company with groups of coworkers. Stuff like going to see some movie in the cinema, have some beers, cooking lessons, language lessons, poker, airsoft, gym, football / beach volley /etc matches, and way more. Basically random activities that some coworkers decide to do together and organize themselves, and the company only funds at least part of it.

These things are normally kept more or less private, or sometimes show it on their social media. Deviation is a rare case where they put it on their website.


ABK has a gazillion people and studios working on CoD including many talented and experienced people, like the Infinity Ward folks. These folks who left are only a very small part of the CoD staff, I think CoD will be fine. Specially once they release Warzone Mobile.
Does put into question the frequency of future CoD releases if Phil Spencer actually does want the Activision teams to make different games though.
 

Yurinka

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Does put into question the frequency of future CoD releases if Phil Spencer actually does want the Activision teams to make different games though.
No, as I remember the people who left to Deviation and SIE didn't work in the two more recent titles where Treyarch was involved,, the MW 2 and 3 remakes. These Deviation / SIE guys were only a small part of Treyarch staff, and Treyarch is a small part of the whole CoD staff since there are a ton of other teams involved.
 

Aidendelaney95

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I think Jason's game will likely use UE5, not Decima - even though I'd prefer Decima. If it used Decima, Jason's team would have to learn it while making the game. That's time and money potentially wasted when they could use it to build the game. Not to mention the additional money spent to develop and house the team Sony's presumably building.
 

Yurinka

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Does put into question the frequency of future CoD releases if Phil Spencer actually does want the Activision teams to make different games though.
MS has only two safe gold mine bets: CoD and releasing more DLC for Minecraft, and probably King.

So they shouldn't touch them. If they have let's say 12 studios working on CoD I'd only remove may only one: as an example move away the Crash guys to make a new Crash game and grow the other 11 CoD teams to compensate these people.

Once they are done with Crash they can go back to CoD and other single team could temporally leave CoD to make let's say a Spiro. Later a Tony Hawk maybe. But the core CoD business should remain untouched following the current plan.

Maybe giving them a year without CoD release from time to time (maybe one out of every 5 years) to keep a healthier pace. But things shouldn't change because CoD game sales and addons plus King is their main ABK gold mines.
 

Thirty7ven

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I think Jason's game will likely use UE5, not Decima - even though I'd prefer Decima. If it used Decima, Jason's team would have to learn it while making the game. That's time and money potentially wasted when they could use it to build the game. Not to mention the additional money spent to develop and house the team Sony's presumably building.

Death Stranding had a really fast development cycle, and we’re talking about a Japan based studio.

Doubt Unreal 5 would be any faster. Also there’s a 5% royalty, so if your game makes 300 million that’s 15 million? And now your new studio/game is stuck on Unreal 5.

With FW and DS2 and more in the pipeline, it makes more sense to keep reaping the rewards of Decima’s continued improvement.

That said Sony did invest a billion dollars in Epic recently. But I don’t know how that relates to PlayStation.
 
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Gamernyc78

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Death Stranding had a really fast development cycle, and we’re talking about a Japan based studio.

Doubt Unreal 5 would be any faster. Also there’s a 5% royalty, so if your game makes 300 million that’s 15 million? And now your new studio/game is stuck on Unreal 5.
Good point on the royalty aspect.
 

Yurinka

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I think Jason's game will likely use UE5, not Decima - even though I'd prefer Decima. If it used Decima, Jason's team would have to learn it while making the game. That's time and money potentially wasted when they could use it to build the game. Not to mention the additional money spent to develop and house the team Sony's presumably building.
Death Stranding had a really fast development cycle, and we’re talking about a Japan based studio.

Doubt Unreal 5 would be any faster. Also there’s a 5% royalty, so if your game makes 300 million that’s 15 million? And now your new studio/game is stuck on Unreal 5.

With FW and DS2 and more in the pipeline, it makes more sense to keep reaping the rewards of Decima’s continued improvement.

That said Sony did invest a billion dollars in Epic recently. But I don’t know how that relates to PlayStation.
Good point on the royalty aspect.
One good thing UE has is that being super popular it's super easy for companies to hire devs who already are experts on it and need zero training. Plus there's huge amount of external addons/tools, features and stuff that Decima doesn't have. As an example, UE5 is ready to make mobile games or VR, plus has a ton of MP (and with crossplay) games made for it while Decima -as far as we know- doesn't.

Regarding the royalty, Sony invested a gazillion dollars on Epic Games so I assume that in exchange they'll get 0% royatly + exclusive early access to upcoming UE stuff + top VIP priority regarding tech support from UE and other perks. I assume Sony didn't only invest on Epic to get a cut from the UE/Fortnite/Fall Guys/Rocket League money.

And to be precise, it's a 5% of what the studio made after its first million. Meaning, if a game has only been released in Steam and after removing Valve's 30% it generated to the studio $1,000,001, the studio has to pay to UE $0.05.
 
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Gamernyc78

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One good thing UE has is that being super popular it's super easy for companies to hire devs who already are experts on it and need zero training.

Regarding the royalty, Sony invested a gazillion dollars on Epic Games so I assume that in exchange they'll get 0% royatly + exclusive early access to upcoming UE stuff + top VIP priority regarding tech support from UE and other perks.
Hmmm you are right about the Epic investment so it could be possible.