What do you expect & hope for from Haven Studios?
- Thread starter Remember_Spinal
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I had this idea for a game where there was a huge central island... with mountains in the middle with minerals like Iron, silver, gold etc. Forests around the mountains and then grass and beaches near the coasts..... it would basically be a resource island.
People would buy their own personal islands around the main one and get a basic boat and tool and they would have to go to the big island to get resources to build a shelter / house and upgrade it gradually. There would also be a shop island, where you could buy certain things and your ship could be upgraded.
You could visit friends islands, collaborate and do adventures together, with special events..... like hunting some crazy limited time beast etc.
Anyway, if it was anything like that, I would be happy.
People would buy their own personal islands around the main one and get a basic boat and tool and they would have to go to the big island to get resources to build a shelter / house and upgrade it gradually. There would also be a shop island, where you could buy certain things and your ship could be upgraded.
You could visit friends islands, collaborate and do adventures together, with special events..... like hunting some crazy limited time beast etc.
Anyway, if it was anything like that, I would be happy.
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The artists seem to be posting quite a lot of fantasy genre stuff, so maybe a fantasy game? I would love that, personally - proper fantasy too, with dragons and stuff.
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Haven : Sony inaugure son premier studio au Canada
Après moins d'un an d'existence, le studio Haven a convaincu les grands patrons de Sony d'investir dans leur compagnie. Quelques mois plus tard, le studio montréalais s'est même joint à la grande famille PlayStation Studios. Plus tôt cette semaine, Sony en profitait pour inviter les médias et...
www.geeksandcom.com
I will only have an opinion and expect anything after they show what they are working on.
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Cerny is really hands on with this studio, they must be doing a lot of interesting stuff.
These are really good developments, and I think if Sony were smart, they aught to consider working out a sweetheart deal with Google for Stadia and cloud infrastructure. They need secure a stable means of cloud growth not just for their customer-facing services and products, but for enabling 3P partners in hybrid cloud development software as well, particularly when that is something Microsoft are very aggressive in wanting to do with many of the same 3P devs/pubs but to their benefit instead (Azure cloud).
Right now I think Google are in a position with Stadia similar to Nvidia was with Tegra before Nintendo stepped into the picture. Perfectly great tech with a parent company that has zero idea WTF to do with it at mass scale. Nintendo were able to get Tegra for quite cheap and leverage it into the wildly successful Switch; Sony could potentially get a similar sweetheart deal for Stadia tech and usage of Google cloud servers now and into the future, improve their own cloud tech (and Google's) by the two sharing cloud technologies and iterating developments, and more.
For Sony the benefits are obvious; they can realistically get a cheaper deal with Google than whatever they can with Microsoft (remember, Sony & Microsoft signed the MOU back in 2019/2020 but AFAIK Sony aren't actually using Azure yet and even if so, could drop it at any time), and would allow them to avoid directly funding/strengthening Microsoft's own acquisition strategy (they're using the profits generated from Azure, Windows and Office to leverage financing for gaming acquisitions like ABK), frees Sony from being a dependent to Microsoft (any plans with 3P WRT cloud-based services in infrastructure by Sony would be fully dependent on Microsoft's managing of Azure plus MS could turn around and offer much of that same stuff at cheaper prices, undercutting Sony), and Sony can get access to better cloud tech (lower-level access through Google, Stadia itself often cited as the best cloud streaming tech for gaming, etc.).
Google, though, get some really good benefits as well. Through partnering with Sony, they can get tons of 3P developers and publishers to become clients of whatever iteration of cloud tech Sony & Google build; the same way Microsoft leveraged the Xbox brand (and, literally, Xbox division via Sarah Bond) to get Sega as a strategic Azure client, Sony can do that via leveraging the PlayStation brand to get 3P developers and publishers to utilize their own services and tech in partnership with Google. That gives Google access to 3P devs and pubs they otherwise likely never would have gotten access to before, and gives them ample clientele for, essentially, their Stadia and cloud server capacities. If there's some type of "battle" between them and Microsoft in this regard, they can beat Microsoft through proxy by working out a strategic partnership with Sony, and it gives Sony the only realistic means of expanding their cloud presence for hosting, services, software, dev tools at scale comparable to Microsoft, while avoiding financially enabling Microsoft's Azure revenue growth or entrenchment with 3P developers and publishers.
And that last part is critical, because as we already see with MS & Sega's partnership, getting 3P devs and pubs onboard as cloud clientele is enabling Microsoft to "trickle down" those benefits to the customers on Xbox and GamePass platforms. Just look at the sheer amount of Sega (and soon, Atlus) games in GamePass, and try telling me that would've came about without Sega signing on as an Azure cloud client. In an event where Microsoft could replicate that with other 3P companies (and, considering the benefits it gives them, they should), that trickles down and presents more value to the average customer looking into the Xbox & GamePass ecosystem, value Sony can't match..
..unless they can similarly lock in 3P devs and pubs to utilize their cloud infrastructure, services, technology (I guess the ICE teams could also contribute to some technology stacks here) and capacities which, at mass scale, could be extremely difficult for them to do unless they partner with a company that's effectively MS's equal in the cloud market, has fantastic tech basically languishing in NowhereLand, and would jump at the opportunity to enter a strategic partnership if it meant being able to compete in a sub-market a chief rival is looking to dominate. Google fits every single one of those criteria, and they just happen to be in the right spot to where both they and Sony can have some long-term benefits.
Well, that's the way I've been thinking about Sony's cloud strategy for the past while, anyway. Again I know they have the MOU with Microsoft Azure, but that was done well before Microsoft themselves decided to start buying up large publishers like Zenimax and ABK, and are signaling they intend to buy even more. The dynamics between them and Sony have understandably changed and I think people forget what a hit Sony's stock price took when Microsoft merely announced they were buying ABK, that was $20 billion wiped right off and I don't think they ever really recovered it back. So Sony and Google entering such a partnership would not only be good for their market caps and stock prices, but also lead to some real fruit, and it could also help Sony balance the scales against Microsoft WRT the cloud future.
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Agreed, that would be the biggest move for sony going forward to have a joint partnership with google for their cloud tech. Google didn’t have the cache to make moves on their own in gaming but Sony do.
This would put fear into Microsofts hearts
But aside from everything else, on the topic of that actual post, between what they're doing at Haven (some of it reminds me of the DALL-E ML model) and Ninja Theory using AI ML for VA work (ML-powered speech synthesis I take it), these are going to be some awesome developments for speeding up bulk generation of lower-end asset content. The sort of stuff that usually requires lots of manual labor (either through employees, contractors or a mix of both), a lot of that can hopefully be phased out with cheaper, more time-efficient and labor-efficient AI asset creation (3D mesh, backgrounds, code, voice & audio, text etc.) model systems powered by ML and networked together through the cloud.
Although there's still an ethical question of how much of the labor on that lower end do you replace with automation; I think there's a balance that has to be struck not in the literal sense but a figurative one. And you're always going to need actual people at the upper levels, some at the lower levels too who might help in checking over, curating and fine-tuning some of the results to more closely match what the intended results should be. I understand the concerns over displacement, but the other way of looking at it is: those people would just form their own teams and implement much of the same AI models for asset creation, testing etc. and you actually end up with MORE games of similar production values at a collective budget similar to without these models in place where you get notably fewer of the same games.
All in all it's a net benefit IMO and I hope it's technology that becomes more commonplace over the next several or so years, at least by the time the next round of consoles are ready. The industry could really benefit from it in terms of reigning in AAA dev costs, and ensuring dev timelines aren't screwed up by stuff like global pandemic lockdowns. It's basically future-proofing the industry.
Putting MS on their toes with such a thing would just be icing on the cake for Sony, but something I'm sure Google would savor copiously, considering how they feel MS ruined their chance before they even started (even if that isn't 100% true, Google's not going to admit to the weaknesses/flaws of their own strategy WRT Stadia).
But yeah, can definitely (well, hopefully see that happening between Sony & Google within maybe a year. If there's a way Sony can integrate their current server stack for PS Store, PS+, cloud streaming, backend services, dev tools etc. and the actual hardware too into whatever they can expand into with Google, even better.
Otherwise they would probably have to migrate a lot of those things over which would take time, but could do that gradually while not having a disruption to those services or tools. MS did that with Minecraft moving them off AWS (I think that's what they were on) over onto Azure over a few years. Having found out ABK were going to enter a cloud partnership with Google back in 2020, I think one of the other big reasons MS jumped on to buying ABK was to avoid having to work out any locked-in terms between ABK & Google, and avoid spending the time (and money) needed to migrate any ABK stuff off from Google's servers over onto Azure cloud.
Although there's still an ethical question of how much of the labor on that lower end do you replace with automation; I think there's a balance that has to be struck not in the literal sense but a figurative one. And you're always going to need actual people at the upper levels, some at the lower levels too who might help in checking over, curating and fine-tuning some of the results to more closely match what the intended results should be. I understand the concerns over displacement, but the other way of looking at it is: those people would just form their own teams and implement much of the same AI models for asset creation, testing etc. and you actually end up with MORE games of similar production values at a collective budget similar to without these models in place where you get notably fewer of the same games.
All in all it's a net benefit IMO and I hope it's technology that becomes more commonplace over the next several or so years, at least by the time the next round of consoles are ready. The industry could really benefit from it in terms of reigning in AAA dev costs, and ensuring dev timelines aren't screwed up by stuff like global pandemic lockdowns. It's basically future-proofing the industry.
Putting MS on their toes with such a thing would just be icing on the cake for Sony, but something I'm sure Google would savor copiously, considering how they feel MS ruined their chance before they even started (even if that isn't 100% true, Google's not going to admit to the weaknesses/flaws of their own strategy WRT Stadia).
But yeah, can definitely (well, hopefully see that happening between Sony & Google within maybe a year. If there's a way Sony can integrate their current server stack for PS Store, PS+, cloud streaming, backend services, dev tools etc. and the actual hardware too into whatever they can expand into with Google, even better.
Otherwise they would probably have to migrate a lot of those things over which would take time, but could do that gradually while not having a disruption to those services or tools. MS did that with Minecraft moving them off AWS (I think that's what they were on) over onto Azure over a few years. Having found out ABK were going to enter a cloud partnership with Google back in 2020, I think one of the other big reasons MS jumped on to buying ABK was to avoid having to work out any locked-in terms between ABK & Google, and avoid spending the time (and money) needed to migrate any ABK stuff off from Google's servers over onto Azure cloud.
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Lets hope theres a proper balance between what benefits the publisher and investors and what benefits the workers. I don’t want AI programming and asset creation to take jobs away from actual artists i want them to aid and assist them to make their lives easier and production snappier.
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Yeah, that would be the ideal means of leveraging this type of technology. Again, some positions getting phased out or replaced through this type of automation is bound to happen. That's okay, just don't let it get rampant and, hopefully, new positions are created where many of the old skills are transferrable, so a lot of those people can still have involvement in what comes next.
AI doesn't replace jobs, it's only another tool that requires a ton of work to make it, feed it and use it. And what produces almost never provides a final quality work, but it's good for placeholders, drafts or to explain ideas. It helps make some work faster and better so workers can focus on other things, that's all. But again, it doesn't produce final quality stuff, it's only a base that later devs iterate and work on top or completely replace.
You give MS too much credit. MS didn't ruin anything, they are not a key player in the market, they have a tiny market share. If Stadia failed is due to Google's mistakes.
Sony has no reason to migrate their servers to Google Cloud and MS doesn't care where ABK had their servers. But if they end buying them it's fair to assume they'll use Azure to save some bucks and to bump Azure's metrics.
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