Games industry veteran Jade Raymond’s next game is reportedly an online service game that will be exclusive to PS5.
The report comes from Italian site Multiplayer.it (as spotted by VGC), which cites recruiters seeking talent for the unnamed title as its source.
Raymond rose to prominence as the driving force behind the creation of the Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs franchises at Ubisoft, before moving to Electronic Arts to found Motive Studios. The in-house developer would go on to collaborate with DICE on Star Wars Battlefront II, and release space combat shooter Star Wars Squadrons.
In 2019, Raymond announced she would be heading up Stadia Games and Entertainment, meant to create exclusive titles for Google’s game streaming service. However, Google wound down the studio in February 2021, before it had released a single game.
Just a month later though, Raymond founded Haven Entertainment with Sony, creating titles exclusive to PlayStation consoles. News of Haven’s first game for PS5 was revealed the same day.
Although unconfirmed, it’s likely that this mystery title supposedly being recruited for is one and the same as the in-development title teased in March 2021. In a blog post published in June 2021, Raymond hinted that service games and “fan ownership” are crucial to future games’ success, writing that “to hold people’s attention now, you need the power of the network. Game content needs to matter to people at their core.”
It’s also worth noting that some of the biggest games in the world now are games-as-a-service titles, from Overwatch to Grand Theft Auto Online. It’s easy to understand why Raymond – and Sony – would want a successful one that would be exclusive to PS5. However, actual confirmation of what the Haven team is working on is still to come.
Meanwhile, Raymond’s former employer Ubisoft says it is still primarily targeting “premium releases”, with 80 per cent of its investments going towards so-called ‘AAA games’. It is also considering releasing its titles on Valve’s upcoming handheld Steam Deck “if it’s big”.
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