Sony Sells Off Sony Online Entertainment

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."

Comments

The Zynga business model

[Orion Blastar]

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.

free-to-pay model

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:free-to-pay model

[_xeno_]

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.

We have different definition of indie...

[aepervius]

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