Sony Interactive Entertainment will be acquiring Haven Entertainment Studios for an undisclosed price as its first Canada-based PlayStation development studio.
Haven Studios is led by industry veteran Jade Raymond, best known for helping create the acclaimed Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs franchises. Raymond found the studio barely a year ago after departing Google Stadia as its vice president for creating exclusive, first-party content.
Haven Studios is being funded by Sony to create a new multiplayer-focused intellectual property for PlayStation 5. That in-development project remains to be announced. Sony has however seen enough to consider an acquisition even though Haven Studios has not released a single game since its creation.
“The studio’s focus on creating an original AAA multiplayer game will not only flex the power of PlayStation 5 but will further expand upon the diverse catalog of gaming experiences that can only be found on PlayStation,” said Sony CEO Jim Ryan in a press release.
Haven Entertainment Studios will hence be another investment by Sony in its growing focus on live service games, and one of 10 games that Sony reportedly plans to roll out by 2026 to strengthen its multiplayer library on PlayStation 5.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz about the acquisition, PlayStation Studios head Hermen Hulst was all praise for what Haven Studios has achieved in its brief time.
“What Haven has created is so exciting for us, there was just a desire to deepen that relationship,” said Hulst. “We have been very impressed with how Haven is coming together.
“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.”
On the goal of Sony investing in live service games, Hulst confirmed that there are “quite a few [projects] in development or conceptualization” for PlayStation 5.
He also emphasized that Sony will not be getting carried away with its multiplayer-focused approach. PlayStation Studios will “always carry on making these single-player narrative-based games such as Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us, and Horizon Forbidden West”.
