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Sony Sells Off Sony Online Entertainment

Posted by samzenpus on from the circle-of-business dept.

donniebaseball23 writes Sony Online Entertainment is to become Daybreak Game Company and turn its focus to multi-platform gaming. The company has been acquired by Columbus Nova and is now an indie studio. "We will continue to focus on delivering exceptional games to players around the world, as well as bringing our portfolio to new platforms, fully embracing the multi-platform world in which we all live," said Daybreak president John Smedley. But why did Sony shed SOE? Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter believes an online gaming company "isn't a great fit, particularly as games are shifting increasingly to a free-to-play mobile model."

101 comments

  1. The Zynga business model by Orion+Blastar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Make social network and mobile games that are free to play but require you to buy in-game items in order to complete quests and become better.

    Make sure you copy the ideas of other game companies.

    When the game isn't doing too well, move it to the location in India and let the India division support it until it dies off and has an end of life.

    Hire and fire developers all willy nilly, to save on research costs.

    Release the first version all buggy so that people have to buy the DLC that changes the game and fixes the bugs for more money.

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    Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
    1. Re:The Zynga business model by Stormy+Dragon · · Score: 1

      I theenk ee as seen through the charade!

    2. Re:The Zynga business model by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      A large market of people who buy and play games on phones is worth more than the smaller market of people who buy and play games on computers. Phone games cost much less to develop, but also provide much larger margins when they hit. This lower cost allows more nimble execution by smaller development teams and more product portfolio diversification. Why wouldn't I copycat a successful game design? It saves me money. As for outsourcing, what business wouldn't provide a particular quality point at a lower price point? And as for overall quality, why would they provide more than the consumers demand without charging more?

      More importantly, why do the gamesters think their little fantasy world should be more immune to economic impulses in the real world than any other software product? In reality, your entertainment software is of much less importance than a lot of other software out there (or that could be out there) that costs less to develop and probably provides a lot more benefit. And, if you're too lazy as a customer to do anything about it, why come bitching to us?

      TL;DR version: Gamesters be hatin' on the big C - Capitalism - and their lack of power under its system.

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      That is all.
    3. Re: The Zynga business model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesn't matter what he sees through if he never does anything about it. Hence the problem.

      If the CIA torture report was any indication, the crimes being committed by the US government against humanity just aren't important to most Americans. People are more interested in the shitfest half time show Katy Perry put on than the CIA torturing and murdering the innocent, drowning them, starving them, anything yo let out their aggression and deep seated racism. Yet the American public simply don't care. Too "fat and happy" as George Carlin would have put it.

      You really think the same people willing to ignore 6000+ pages of crimes against humanity are going to stop buying apps for their shiny toys, just because of a poor business model?

    4. Re: The Zynga business model by Captain+Splendid · · Score: 1

      IT'S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAME JOURNALISM!

      Or something like that. I'm sure somebody who takes vidya far too seriously can enlighten us downthread.

      --
      Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
    5. Re:The Zynga business model by tompaulco · · Score: 1

      A large market of people who buy and play games on phones is worth more than the smaller market of people who buy and play games on computers.

      Not to me. I'd rather have 100 customers pay me $100 for a product than 10,000 pay me $1. People complain about the quality of phone games, but most of the time they are free or at most a couple of dollars. I'm not willing to spend millions of dollars to develop an app that somebody is only willing to pay me $1 for on the phone, but if it was on a PC, would be happy to pay me $60.

      --
      If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
    6. Re: The Zynga business model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Pussy Pass ftw.

    7. Re:The Zynga business model by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      Make social network and mobile games that are free to play but require you to buy in-game items in order to complete quests and become better.

      Umm, I play Words with Friends & Candy Crush daily, and have never spent a cent in them.

    8. Re:The Zynga business model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, there goes any interest I had in Everquest Next/Landmark

      SOE brought stuff Japan like Wizardry Online, and then didn't do much with it. Finally killing it off due to lack of interest. See this repeat a few more times and you realize that if you want to play a MMORPG without being penny-pinched just to progress, you play one from a company that offers that, which is Square-Enix (FFXIV) or Blizzard(WoW)

      The entire Social Gaming thing may have more people playing, but it has relatively few people who pay, and it's those few people who support the entire game. If those few people see a new shiny game to play, the old game gets dumped and that's it.

      Non-online/non-micropayment games have the most longevity. But they are increasingly becoming rare.

    9. Re:The Zynga business model by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      you would be better(scorewise) in candy crush if you spent money.

      you would also be better(scorewise) in words with friends if you spent money.

      get it? want to appear to be smarter to your friends? you could do that with the inapp purchases, as long as they don't find out.

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      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    10. Re:The Zynga business model by RavenLrD20k · · Score: 1

      How many "friends" do you have on facebook who get nagged by your games to join in? Of those, how many also play them? Of those, how many are flakes that actually give money to these guys?

      Also note: Of all the friends I've spoken to directly about sending me game invites to things like Words, Candy Crush, Slotmainia etc, only 2 out of 310 admitted to pressing any button to share. Also, only those two were able to see the post on their wall. The other 308 were completely clueless that the game was doing this in their name and couldn't find a wall post to corroborate. Of course, did they stop playing the games because of that? I think about 100 did. The others just told me to block the game app, it was too much fun for them to care. I think I culled another 250 out of that list down to keeping people I actually needed to associate with for one reason or another. Unfortunately, the 2 willful sharers I have to be in regular contact with for other things.

      The point of the last paragraph is to say that by playing these crap freemium casual games on a social media platform, you not only open up these games to make posts in your name to everyone in your contact list, but you're also granting the companies that make these games access to your contact list... Which means more people they can try to target as a sample for building into a new demographic if they won't play a game in the current one. Of course, they do this with the hopes of adding a few more suckers that would give them real-world money for in-game perks at best; A few hundred - thousand more people to add to their sample size at worst.

    11. Re:The Zynga business model by mattack2 · · Score: 1

      I *think* I have all of the "spam FB" stuff turned off. The only times I have them post to FB is the direct "get me access to more levels" stuff, and I specifically pick the people who have sent the same kind of thing to me. ...though I don't see how this relates directly to spending money.. Plenty of things _want_ to spam to FB. Heck, one grocery store has a "share & save" program to get some very good deals (sometimes free items, very often 50% off)... and whenever I do it, I always change it to share to "only me" every single time, so I'm not spamming FB.. but I still get the deal.

  2. free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously, fuck the 'free-to-play/pay mobile model.' It has ruined gaming. Even better is when you find you paid for a game and the fucking thing is STILL free-to-pay if you intend on having a chance to win.

    1. Re:free-to-pay model by mlts · · Score: 2

      This is exactly what is killing the app model. Once IAP became standard, almost all games went from decent standalone apps with a reasonable difficulty level to ratty treadmills designed to stymie, obstruct, and frustrate the user so they would pay for more brains/smurfberries/tokens/simoleans/whatever to just clear that one hurdle... only to run into another one shortly after.

      Even the old tower defense games had their difficulty changed from doable to impossible unless one spent cash for additional points. Expansion content like towers or levels is understandable, but having to spend cash -per play- is something I'd do at an arcade, but not on my phone.

    2. Re:free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Additionally, how the fuck is it that Smedley still hasn't been tarred, feathered and ran out of town yet.

      With his track record, it defies all logic.

    3. Re:free-to-pay model by Bender+Unit+22 · · Score: 1

      I agree, I used to buy 1-3 apps/games pr. month. some for a dollar other a little more and a few more expensive.
      Now I stopped playing games on my phone or tablet because I am sick and tired of the virtual coin-up machine that is has become.
      I don't mind paying for the games I play, but I refuse keep paying for it.

    4. Re:free-to-pay model by _xeno_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The thing is, we (OK, so not all of us, but the population at large) did that to ourselves. People just don't want to pay for games any more. Instead they'll go for the "free" game and play that instead of the paid game.

      What was the last truly successful MMO that required a subscription? We all know the answer: World of Warcraft. Nothing has come close to it since then. People just don't want to pay for their games. So to remain alive, the competitors go free to play. But they still need to pay for servers and developers and recoup their costs. So what do they do? They go free-to-play, but then to ensure that there's a reason for people to give them money, they go pay-to-win.

      And people pay! That's the issue, people pay them. I think it turns out that the majority of players playing these games don't pay any money. Instead, some fraction of players (the whales) spend thousands of dollars to win. And it's these whales that the companies care about, not the gamers that just want a fun game to play.

      It'd be nice to just blame the "whales" but - ultimately, it's not their fault. Because they're willing to crack open their wallet and pay for their entertainment. The problem is the huge number of gamers that aren't willing to shell out even $5 for a mobile game and instead go after the "free" games. Video game development still costs money, so publishers have to find some way to get money - so they go with pay to win.

      Because that's where the money is. The market has spoken, and the market is us. Gamasutra was right, gamers really are dead.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
    5. Re:free-to-pay model by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Free to play has helped some things out though. I know people hate it but much of that is knee jerk; they're angry at the fact that old school subscription models are leaving or that the hardcore players are a minority now. I've seen games that migrated to F2P and all the hysterical predictions of doom did not happen.

    6. Re: free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get how they are still around, I love SOE but they lie, move slower than molassis and they are all stuck in the past.

      Eqn will be outdated by the time it comes out, I have yet to see good graphics for requiring a top end system. I hope it turns out good.

      When smaller teams do the same in less time it shows. This might be the death of them.

    7. Re: free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Personally I stopped buying any apps for mobile devices around the same time that the Guardian released documents indicating that popular apps and games (Angry Birds was mentioned specifically) were being exploited by the NSA to get their nasty little backdoors onto as many of said devices as possible.

      None of these "free to play" games are free in any sense of the word. You pay for advantages via in game purchases (paying to cheat at a free game, the mind boggles), you pay for DLC. Even if you avoid all that you still "pay," but in that case your privacy and rights are the entrance fee.

      The only way to win this "game" is not to play. Shut it down. Turn the mobile devices off and don't look back. Don't buy a tablet or a smartphone. Go dark. No emails, no facebook, no Google or Skype. Yes, it's a tech luddites approach perhaps, but people don't realize just how much power they have over these spies simply by NOT playing their little game.

      No one honest will say that it'll be easy, but when the data stops flowing and those expensive, water-guzzling cooled servers have nothing to analyze and manipulate? They'll be throwing money out the window with no return. The only thing these Fuchs actually care about is cash and the intelligence that sells. Don't give it to them.

    8. Re:free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, fuck the 'free-to-play/pay mobile model.' It has ruined gaming. Even better is when you find you paid for a game and the fucking thing is STILL free-to-pay if you intend on having a chance to win.

      We're talking about subscription MMOs...so what was lost exactly?

    9. Re:free-to-pay model by mlts · · Score: 1

      The P2W model is what ran me off from Rift. When you could spend cash in their store and buy raid gear, that was it for me.

      Both EQ and EQ2 offer gear from the store... but it would be about the equivalent of a set of WoW greens. Decent gear, but it won't annoy the people raiding because it doesn't compete with what comes from the bosses. It is mainly so someone can get caught up on gear, or at least get to a baseline offered, saving time that route.

      I'm just glad WoW hasn't buckled under. Even that MMO has taken a beating with the last expansion, and it took some interesting innovation [1] to bring subscribers back to that game.

      I think gaming is in the doldrums... something new will be around sooner or later, and the cycle will begin again new. It happened with "multimedia" games like MYST, then FPS, then MMOs, then smartphone/tablet apps, and now it is stagnant. Who knows. Maybe consoles will be a must have in a year or two.

      [1]: The garrison is an interesting mechanism. Player housing has been around since the MUD days, but WoW's implementation has made a way for people not playing often to catch up in raiding, something to advance with limited time, a place to start quests, and in general, something to help keep players involved in the game.

    10. Re:free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But Sony got it right with Everquest. I went back to Everquest when they switched to free to play two years ago. Previously the monthly fee created a barrier, either you had to play a lot or not at all. Now I can play whenever I want and I don't have to ask myself if I should cancel or not my subcribtion. There are some limitations when you play for free but they really give you enough material to still enjoy the game.

    11. Re:free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have to consider the source. Michael Pachter is an imbecile.

    12. Re:free-to-pay model by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Indeed, fuck the Hurry-up-and-Wait, aka pay-to-win.

      Social Games, ironically, are neither social, nor games. The bigger problem however though is:

      They have ZERO respect for your time OR your space.

      i.e. Brave Frontier
      Units intentionally don't "stack", thus you are forced to waste gems to "unlock" more inventory space. Of corse you can RMT gems ...

    13. Re:free-to-pay model by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      XCOM on tablet/mobile was pretty good: PC triple-A game ported with only a slight downgrade in graphics, full game on purchase, no additional costs thereafter.

  3. Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

    This is a way of insulating the rest of the Kirabuta (or whatever they call the "holding company" I owned ADR shares in) from the parts that hackers attack.

    Expect them to spin off the movie division the same way, changing it's name too, so that North Korea attacks only the film part that underpays women, not the rest of the holding company which underpays women.

    (personal opinion only, but based on many years watching shareholder meetings online as an owner)

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    1. Re:Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are ridiculous.

    2. Re:Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Kirabuta

      Keiretsu

    3. Re:Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The opinion of an IT drone. Thanks good sir!

    4. Re:Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 0

      thanks, forgot the word, still depressed from the Seahawks final call.

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    5. Re: Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The "hacks" haven't even been conclusively linked to North Korea yet. In addition its been revealed in the past few weeks that former (and possibly current) Sony employees handed over much of the information said hackers needed, so to pin it all on Kim Jong-Un's bad haircut is just buying into the narrative. The narrative of the FBI and the NSA. Both collaborators in an illegal, mass surveillance program that extends well outside the borders of the USA.

      Do you really, honestly trust information handed down by these people? Are you really that naive?

      Scratch that, you're a Slashdot "power user." Of course you're that naive.

    6. Re: Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 1

      Of course I am. Ignore the trial going on in the Air India case that I may or may not have done certain CT ops in BC. And my dad had nothing to do with anything that became the NSA.

      I believe you, because you're "well informed". Like most people who think we haven't been doing this stuff for many decades.

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    7. Re: Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The "hacks" haven't even been conclusively linked to North Korea yet. In addition its been revealed in the past few weeks that former (and possibly current) Sony employees handed over much of the information said hackers needed, so to pin it all on Kim Jong-Un's bad haircut is just buying into the narrative. The narrative of the FBI and the NSA. Both collaborators in an illegal, mass surveillance program that extends well outside the borders of the USA.

      Do you really, honestly trust information handed down by these people? Are you really that naive?

      Scratch that, you're a Slashdot "power user." Of course you're that naive.

      I'm not naive, I have the ability to look at the situation and realize that nobody else on the planet, other than NK, gave even 1/10th of a milli-Shit about that stupid fucking movie. Sure, maybe it's possible some other agency did that (false flag etc.) but WHY? Nobody else stood to benefit, either from holding back the movie or pinning it on the NK's. Sure, plenty of people hate Sony and had desire or reasons to fuck them up, but there were plenty of other movies they could have fucked with that would have hit Sony in the pocket a LOT harder than that one.

      Sometimes things aren't all Conspiracies and Illuminati in the Shadows, pal. Sometimes, it's something as simple as NK wanting to put on a show online just like they do with rockets and missiles in the physical world.

    8. Re: Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The simplest explanation is it was a disgruntled IT (ex-)employee of Sony. It's ridiculous to believe the same NK that barely has (heavily monitored) Internet access has a team of leet hackers with an attitude.

    9. Re:Real Reason: Hacker Attacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, at least you got the first letter right.

  4. Um, so what about the Playstation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "games are shifting increasingly to a free-to-play mobile model."

    The Playstation is not a free-to-play mobile system. Is this the beginning of the death of Sony gaming?

    1. Re:Um, so what about the Playstation? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First of all, SOE doesn't handle the Playstation. SCE does, another division of the company as another poster stated (it does get a bit confusing).

      Second...I think calling it the "death of Sony gaming" is a bit short sighted. As you say, the Playstation is not a "free-to-play mobile system." Nor is the XBox One or the Wii. The above quote, however, is correct. There's about as much money or more being made on games like Candy Crush as there are on the top tier, triple-A tites...the difference being that they barely cost a thing to develop in comparison, one person can bang out a Bejeweled clone in a day with sufficient knowledge of the development kit they're working with. They give it away for "free" and make the gameplay frustrating as hell for anyone who doesn't buy the in-game purchases...so people buy them, they rake in the cash. They don't need to invest hundreds of millions in developing MMO's like WoW, Everquest or the like...they don't need to invest further hundreds of millions in servers to support those games and best of all, they run on restricted devices like cellphones and tablets. The apps for mobile devices play it so fast and loose with what permissions and access requirements they need that Sony could make a killing just from pulling the personal data from your device and using it for advertising purposes. Google's already doing it. Apple is probably already doing it, I don't know enough about their hardware or their "phone home" procedures to say, but why wouldn't they?

      What's really staring you in the face is, potentially, the death of console and PC gaming altogether. How many stories have you seen here and elsewhere about people (rightly) complaining about defective DRM, a mish-mash of content delivery networks like uPlay, Origin, Steam...how many others? It's hard to keep track. The consoles aren't much better lately...Microsoft nearly doubled the sales of the XBox One by _removing_ the Kinect from the bundle. Meanwhile everyone's looking starry-eyed about the prospects of VR making a comeback. Oh, on mobile devices gaming might survive, sure. As for consoles and computers? They're teetering on the edge of a market crash we haven't seen the likes of since Atari bottomed out in the 80's. People are sick of the bullshit they need to go through, a tablet or a phone they can jump into a game and jump out practically at a whim. As Bob Dylan said, the "old world is rapidly changing."

      The real problem is that if console and PC gaming kicks the bucket...what do you think these same companies are going to do with mobile games? They're going to lock them down, they're going to introduce DRM just as bad as the PC gamers are facing, they're going to mine your personal information and sell it to the highest bidder. What happens to gaming when the last bastion of gaming turns as sour as the old guard? If the stories posted here are any indication, the "younger generation" growing up with these mobile devices don't seem to give a fraction of a fuck about the privacy issues, the mass surveillance and the lack of control...they just want games for a decent price and hardware that doesn't set them back five or six hundred bucks. Inconvenience them, on the other hand...and gaming might well go down the toilet for the second time, a disaster 30 years in the making.

  5. Everquest by Rinikusu · · Score: 1

    So.. we still have Everquest?

    --
    If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
    1. Re:Everquest by sahuxley · · Score: 1

      You should try this. http://www.project1999.com/

    2. Re:Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but now it's an indie game, so the hipsters will flock to it so the will be able to tell everyone in the future how much better it was before it sells out.

    3. Re:Everquest by mlts · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yep, every year or so, it gets an expansion. The engine is dated, but it has the most content of any MMO out there just due to its age. The old quests are still there, but the game has moved to missions. The grinding is somewhat present, but with missions, one does level up decently quickly. If you die, summon your corpse to the guild lobby, have your merc res you, then go back swinging.

      There is an "EQ3" in the works, or Everquest Next. It is interesting how that develops over time with the press releases, and it appears the devs are doing it right, and will release when it is ready, and no earlier.

    4. Re:Everquest by mlts · · Score: 1

      That wouldn't be too bad. Everquest and EQ2 have a difficulty level that is significantly higher than the mainstream MMO out there. Not too high, but it takes some planning before running in a raid zone and pulling mobs willy-nilly. If more hipsters learned how to raid, that would be nice.

    5. Re:Everquest by blackicye · · Score: 1

      If you'd tried Final Fantasy XIV and Wildstar, you'd have seen multiplayer difficulty levels that far eclipsed those of EQ1 and 2.

      Wildstar had to lower difficulty levels significantly to preserve subscription numbers.

      Though the Corpse Run mechanics of EQ1 arguably made it way more risky / intense / tedious depending on your perspective.

      The full corpse looting in UO also greatly increased risk and "difficulty."

      No modern MMO developer has been insane enough to dabble with these brutal mechanics, though Darkfall did go the open PvP, full corpse looting route, and couldn't gain any significant traction.

    6. Re:Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean FFXIV 1.0 before they nerfed it into the group to appease the WoW crowd, right? Because the current FFXIV game is something no self-respecting EverQuest player would care about. It's Yet Another WoW Clone in a market full of them. Which is too bad, FFXIV 1.0 had some really neat ideas and was harmed more by a buggy client than anything else.

    7. Re:Everquest by don+depresor · · Score: 1

      You should check EVE online if you want brutal mechanics :P

    8. Re:Everquest by Ranbot · · Score: 3, Informative

      You should check EVE online if you want brutal mechanics :P

      Or you could get the same effect by balancing your checkbook in MS Excel in front of a background of stars. The brutality of gameplay depends your personal finances.

    9. Re:Everquest by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      They still keep updating the engine tho,

      January 21, 2015 update included: "- Made an adjustment to the way that NPC character models created prior to the Omens of War expansion are loaded and displayed. This change coincides with a number of graphical updates and fixes to these models."

      It's slow, but still progressing.

    10. Re:Everquest by blackicye · · Score: 1

      Or you could get the same effect by balancing your checkbook in MS Excel in front of a background of stars. The brutality of gameplay depends your personal finances.

      Unless you're cozy with a developer, you can just get them to spawn assets for you.

    11. Re:Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean FFXIV 1.0 before they nerfed it into the group to appease the WoW crowd, right? FFXIV 1.0 had some really neat ideas and was harmed more by a buggy client than anything else.

      Uh, what? I was there from launch day, and while I agree they had a few interesting ideas, it wasn't much of a game at all. It was a shell of a game that had almost no actual content, and what little did exist was horrifically unbalanced. At launch time, that game barely qualified as being out of the Alpha development stage in every category other than the Art assets.
      Yes, the client was buggy, buggy in ways that made you seriously question the abilities of the Dev team. It wasn't just a few little blips, it was serious issues with missing or incomplete functionality in the menus that any self-respecting developer should have been able to deal with. But that was NOT what harmed it "more than anything else", that was the most MINOR of the problems they faced.

      They did not "Nerf" the game, not at all. It was nerfed from the beginning. Eventually they realized they couldn't save it, and in order to try and save the online franchise Name (and recoup some of their losses), they pumped out a WoW clone instead.

    12. Re: Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The point is that the 1.0 gameplay was solid. The client needed bugs fixed and more content needed to be added. You're right, it was released in an alpha state. It needed more development time. It needed time to add content. What the game didn't need was complete gutting and replacing with a WoW clone.

      There's nothing resembling challenging gameplay left in the new FFXIV. WoW is more challenging than it is. They ripped the heart and soul of the game out and left it a hollow, boring husk of the promise that 1.0 held.

    13. Re:Everquest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, don't. It's 1000 at a time power gamers without enough room on the raid scene, and nearly every low level character is some low life's 20th alt in full twinked gear ready to drop group and screw you over on a moment's notice when some stupid dragon pops Your lovely memories of 1999 EQ it is not.

    14. Re:Everquest by forgottenusername · · Score: 1

      EQN is interesting, I have hope for it and kind of see this as a positive. SOE has always been awful for EQ* with in-game station cash etc.

      If you have the urge to scratch the old EQ nostalgia itch, try project 1999 ;)

    15. Re:Everquest by MadKeithV · · Score: 1

      it appears the devs are doing it right, and will release when it is ready, and no earlier.

      That's what 3DRealms kept saying about Duke Nukem Forever, and we all know how that ended up.

    16. Re:Everquest by vux984 · · Score: 1

      That's what 3DRealms kept saying about Duke Nukem Forever, and we all know how that ended up.

      A good, if not great single person FPS romp? DNF was fun, and well worth the money i dropped on it on steam. (on sale)

      Yes, a couple of the physics puzzles missed the mark, it was needlessly gratuitious and vulgar, and the whole strip club dream sequence level was retarded.

      But I still can't decide if they were deliberately silly, deliberately over the top vulger, and the whole strip club dream sequence was deliberately stupid all as a truly brilliant satire of the entire modern FPS genre.

      And honestly even if it was unintentional, that just makes the parody even funnier.

  6. even sony got fed up with SOE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    seems even sony got fed up with SOE the king of bad mmo's

  7. Free Realms by The12thRonin · · Score: 1

    Sony murdered the games that were the Free to Play/pay model last year like Free Realms and now that's the future. I'm confused.

    1. Re:Free Realms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see you haven't played Planetside 2.

  8. Hopefully...... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Tanarus, Infantry and Cosmic Rift (the two Totally-Isnt-Subspace variants) can be open sourced.

  9. Details by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you like the decision then Sony made the decision in YOUR interest.

    If you don't like it, it was caused by North Korea.

  10. Likely for the best, quoted "analyst" is dumb by jacks+smirking+reven · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This isn't about Sony jumping in with F2P, it's about the high cost of developing MMO games. When a game costs north of $100,000,000 to develop as well as the high number of servers and support staff you need to be able to reach as many gamers as possible. Being restricted to Sony/PC platform still leaves out the XBox audience (while smaller than PS4/PC it's still a large enough chunk to not ignore) and being under Sony's control means cross-platform is something of a conflict of interest.

    Sony will still be more than amicable with having the new studios games on it's hardware it just gives the developers more flexibility. Sony still collects it's license fees by the game being on PS4 and they'd rather collect those fees (the bread and butter of consoles) and not be responsible for the day-to-day operations, which will likely operate better as an entity who does and only does MMO as opposed to cog in a huge corporate umbrella.

    1. Re:Likely for the best, quoted "analyst" is dumb by halofan_sd · · Score: 2, Informative

      no it's about Sony having to sell assets, they have been selling buildings, now selling other assets. last fiscal year they have a net loss of $2.15 billion

    2. Re:Likely for the best, quoted "analyst" is dumb by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      I've read that Sony makes most of it's income from Insurance in Japan...

      Did the payouts from the 2011 Earthquake/Tsunami/Meltdown have much of an impact?

    3. Re:Likely for the best, quoted "analyst" is dumb by Xest · · Score: 1

      I don't know if the payouts had much of an impact, but the earthquake itself did:

      http://business.time.com/2011/...

  11. Not going to end well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed and there's no word from Sony as yet. GamesIndustry.biz has reached out to them for comment.

    This screams leveraged buy-out. And we all know what that means for the company concerned: a pump-and-dump.

  12. "Indie" LOL. by Jahoda · · Score: 1

    "We will continue to focus on delivering exceptional games to players around the world, as well as bringing our portfolio to new platforms, fully embracing the multi-platform world in which we all live,"

    Spoken like a true indie, working outside that big corporate studio system!!

    1. Re:"Indie" LOL. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indie means an independent developer. Valve, for instance, are independent since they can do whatever they want without caring about a publisher's retarded suggestions. If Daybreak doesn't depend on publishers for cash they're independent, otherwise they're not.

  13. SOE != SCE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haven't read TFA, but from the title, it's Sony Online Entertainment being sold.

    That's different from Sony Computer Entertainment.

    SCE came earlier and started developing and publishing traditional offline/non-mmo games. They are also the ones who developed the PS hardware.

    SOE came later focusing on online/mmos.

  14. They want to make x-box games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sony has exited the very specialized gaming hardware business. Thanks to increased computing power and memory, games can be much bigger, so the cost of producing the content for AAA games skyrocketed. The amount of code involved has grown, and the cost of transistors has shrunk, so a more general purpose CPU architecture is increasingly desired. The Xbox One, PS4, and PC have unified memory, and symmetric processors on the CPU side. The Xbox One, PS4, and PC all use a dedicated GPU, from nvidia, or ATI.

    Thus, the advantage of having a dedicated gaming studio to make games, to promote one's gaming hardware has diminished. It there makes sense to spin off the gaming production companies, so they can make games for all major platforms.... It seems the ultimate evolution of the console, would be the implementation of a gaming API on top of a FOSS OS core, and PC hardware. The PS4, with its FreeBSD kernel, seems to come close to this.

    1. Re: They want to make x-box games by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you always talk out of your ass? Or have you just lost so many teeth to bullshit gingivitis that its the only safe hole for you to spew out of?

  15. You're missing the point. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is just Sony following The Vision (TM).

  16. Prediction by Dunbal · · Score: 1

    I predict that before the year is out it will be bought out and cannibalized by Electronic Arts anyway.

    --
    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  17. We have different definition of indie... by aepervius · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you get acquired by somebody, like say, colombus nova, and work under them, you are not an independent studio anymore.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
    1. Re:We have different definition of indie... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Apparently colombus nova is a 3 man company.

      Worries about them buying the company and pumping it dry of cash abound, however to their credit they've previously bought a gaming company and turned it profitable: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonix#Sale_by_Viacom

  18. You can run but you can't hide by portwojc · · Score: 1

    Just like IBM Deathstars moving on to other manufactures I will remember Daybreak Game Company was once SOE and they made and ruined Star Wars Galaxies. Good luck with the zombie apocalypse clone...

  19. Wow by Charliemopps · · Score: 1

    Smeadly finally drove them into the ground. Without Sony propping them up they'll be dead in less than a year. That morons done more to hurt gaming than just about anyone else in the industry.

    The Frogloks and Jedi finally have their revenge on that lying scum.

    1. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      huh? I don't think much of any part of Sony. But SOE and there insurance division are some of the few that actually keep Sony afloat at the moment. without the rest of Sony as a boat crippling financial boat anchor SOE actually has a chance to make some significant inroads in the market as they won't need to be screwed over by the Sony being near bankrupt and won't need to maintain exclusivity to Sony.

    2. Re:Wow by bloodhawk · · Score: 1

      Sony propping someone up? perhaps you haven't looked at Sony's financial situation for the last few years, they are drowning in debt. SOE is probably going to be far better off without Sony. getting split off from Sony is like winning a place on one of the few life rafts on the titanic.

  20. Sony Boycott. by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

    I had semi-boycotted Sony since the CD Rootkit and PS3 other-OS fiascos; I had 'grandfathered' in EQ, because I had already invested too much time and money into one MMO, and wasn't going to switch.

    Not sure how I feel about Russian oil/mineral conglomerates.

  21. Great news! by JThundley · · Score: 1

    This is great news to me! I've been boycotting Sony Online Entertainment since they're part of Sony. I've been boycotting Sony ever since they put rootkits on music CDs and I learned about all the other shady stuff they've done. Now I can actually spend some money on PlanetSide 2 which is a pretty damn good game.

    1. Re:Great news! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sony's rootkit also infringed copyrights too, remember? They nicked the entire code and executable, selling someone else's work. And nothing was done on that at all.

      I don't do DRM, including steam. But if you HAVE to have a gamefix, you need to accept SOME DRM, and that extra dollop of arrogant hypocrisy may be enough to make a demarcation for you.

    2. Re:Great news! by JThundley · · Score: 1

      Yes actually, I do boycott Windows as well.

      Sure Windows allowed this to happen, but Sony *engineered* this to happen. If this is what they do to their customers, I don't want to be one of them. I don't want to be a victim of their next stunt, of which there have been many in the past after the CD DRM.

    3. Re:Great news! by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I'm thinking that no company is really any better than Sony in actually caring about their customers rights and privacy. Its just that Sony and Microsoft are incompetent enough to make it obvious, while companies like Google and Apple have smarter PR people and a larger marketing budget.

    4. Re:Great news! by JThundley · · Score: 1

      Neither Google or Apple have tried to install a rootkit on my computer. Sony really is a special breed of terrible.

    5. Re:Great news! by JustNiz · · Score: 1

      I think they all would if they thought they could get away with it.

  22. The Zynga business model by stonecutter2 · · Score: 1

    Release the first version all buggy so that people have to buy the DLC that changes the game and fixes the bugs for more money.

    No, no - this is SOE. All versions are buggy...and bugs aren't fixed...they're working as intended, until they mysteriously get resolved. Then they reappear in later fix packs.

  23. Ho hum by stonecutter2 · · Score: 1

    They'll do things just as half-heartedly as before, only with a shiny new name. I'm not shocked Sony ditched SOE, I'm shocked it took them this long. The joke is on Columbus Nova, and Sony's laughing pretty hard right now.

    1. Re:Ho hum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go take a read of Sony's financial statements, they certainly aint laughing. This is most likely a move they have been forced to make to try and stay alive.

  24. Likely for the best, quoted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sony's been into the free to play for years with neverquest, if you looked at it historically they were probably one of the first to move to that model, what they haven't done so well is make inroads into the mobile market.

    I suspect the real reason is they are sick of having the website hacked.

  25. Sony is hemorrhaging by vix86 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Regardless of what any of the articles say about the decision to do this, I personally believe the reason behind this is because Sony is bleeding money left and right. Sony has been selling off parts of their company for the past year now. It's no secret, Sony has been sinking slowly. They sold their mobile division, they sold their Vaio division, and probably came pretty close to selling their TV division as well, before thinking better of it and simply split it off into a new company. Now they are selling one of their big game studios. If Sony can't find a new market to be successful in, then I wouldn't be surprised to hear about Sony being bought by another company here in the next 3-5 years.

    1. Re:Sony is hemorrhaging by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 1

      Sony's bread and butter isn't electronics though; it is insurance !?

      * http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05...

      While they made some pretty bone headed decisions in the past, i.e. flooding the market with too many TV's that consumers don't give a crap about, pouring billions of R&D into the PS3, and have never really recovered from Apple envy, they are slowly turning the Titanic around.

      When a company is so big that they end up suing themselves they aren't going to disappear overnight.

  26. FYI, subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment by mattack2 · · Score: 1

    OK, maybe this is obvious since it contained the word "Online" in the name, but this was a subsidiary of Sony Computer Entertainment.

    I was worried I'd no longer get "free" Sony games (reimbursed on my Sony credit card, at higher rates than I get from other credit cards, for certain areas).

  27. Finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Like many commenting if you've been on the SoE ship since EQ and all their titles, god do I miss pre-NGE SWG (they have an amazing habit of having a good game, then with no notice running it into the ground) and am finally glad to see Sony drop Smed like the lying, money hemorrhaging dirt bag he is. When the head of your company is extremely disliked and the butt of many jokes in forums, all with good reason if you research his history of lying to the community and forcing the devs to take the heat, for the game then maybe it's time to retire Smed. Please, get out of the business before you can do anymore damage to H1Z1 and any potential it has.

    1. Re:Finally by fibonacci8 · · Score: 1

      they have an amazing habit of having a good game, then with no notice running it into the ground

      The word for that in English is "monetizing".

      --
      Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
  28. Re: SOE Management by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 1

    Agreed.

    There is at least one game that may be of interest to me (Planetside 2), but before I touch that one, the former Sony Online Entertainment has to distance itself from its past.

    Selling the company is a good start, but not sufficient. Once they have gotten rid of the old management too, I may take a chance on them. But not before.

    --
    C - the footgun of programming languages
  29. Great news! by unapersson · · Score: 1

    I've always found the rootkit story an interesting one. There are a large number of third party DRM systems that have been in use on Windows over the years. This was just another one of them. Sure this one had some nasty side affects, but so do a lot of DRM systems that Windows has supported. As far as I'm aware this DRM did nothing on any other system. So why is Windows given a free pass on this one? It was designed to allow auto-install of software from CDs that were placed in the drive. Designed to be a DRM friendly system. So you you boycott Windows as well?

  30. A good MMO has to suck a little by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They ruined EQ when they put in the plane of teleport.

    Norrath went from being a big vibrant world to just a series of rooms off a central hallway.

  31. Does this affect the Playstation Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would anyone know if PSN is affected? Is it too changing hands? Or put another way, will Lizard Squad soon be attacking a different omnipotent overlord?

    1. Re: Does this affect the Playstation Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, psn is apart of sony computer ent. sony sold sony online ent which makes mmos and free to play games for mobile such as EQ

    2. Re: Does this affect the Playstation Network by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thank you!

  32. Not even surprised by CoachKervan · · Score: 1

    Not surprised, they are really heading down the drain fast!