Sony sells SOE

Sony has unloaded SOE to a investment management company.

I have no love for SOE but selling to a company that has zero interest in gaming, and a whole lot of interest in maximizing profits can't be good for the future of their online games.

Source

Certainly didn't see this coming.

So much for H1Z1, PS2 on PS4, and EQ:N.

I was looking forward to ever quest next, welp.

They say it's still coming out.

Who knows it might not be that bad a thing....have to wait and see.

EDIT:Says " Daybreak, as the studio is now called, will also become a multi-platform gaming company, with plans to build games for PlayStation, Xbox and mobile according to the team."

No mention of new pc games in the future....that's just bad. Bum deal...

Why would you think that's not happening? This might mean they now make appearance on XBox, but I don't think this has any bearing on them releasing on PS4 (especially since they're already in development for that platform)

Have to wait and see what happens. A Publisher selling off one of it's developer divisions isn't always a bad thing.

Meh... I don't play any of their games. I tried PS2 and it was very disappointing.

@BSC14:

Thats a bot.

I expect Sony to sell a few more things as well over the next couple of years.

That was surprising. I'm not really worried about EQ:N not coming out, though. They've put a lot of money into the development of it.

Investment management company = kiss o' death. They just want the IP for their portfolio.

Never said they weren't happening. It's just clear Sony had certain consumer standards which often meant that the quality of their products exceeded the amount of profit they made from them. If SOE wanted to, they probably could've easily made a lot more money from PS2 by using EA-tactics. But they didn't want their reputation drug through the mud and they cared about making games people genuinely loved to play. Now that they're owned by a business that's likely purely about profit (unlike Sony), you can surely expect them to milk everything SoE has for its worth.

I fully expect all of SoE's games to get greedier, slimier, and worse produced now the bottom line profit is the only concern now.

Not necessarily true. It can be either a good or bad thing. My company has always worked with private investors, and we're growing steadily and have been for year. Our current partner also has Twitter in their portfolio. We're not worried.

It looks like Sony is willing to finally admit that they cannot handle all the divisions that they so ambitiously created over the years. Hopefully, this results in more focused endeavors in the forthcoming years.

Ah, now I understand. Yeah, who knows what will happen with the monetization schemes now

Two words:

Everquest: Next: Candy Crush Mobile Edition (tm) , now for iOS (tm), Android (tm), and Windows Mobile (tm).

That's kind of what I'm thinking but who knows, maybe it will work out for the best. I'm definitely pessimistic but I'm that way about most things these days so my cynicism isn't much of a barometer.

That's more than two words :P

Candy Crush is already out on those platforms... hopefully Soda Crush (sequel) comes out for Windows Phone soon.

And so the end starts to begin....

LINK

Yup. David Georgeson was a veteran and pretty much the "visionary" behind Everquest: Next. That's one game I can cross off my the list of titles I'm looking forward to. Laying off the game's director half-way into the project means nothing but bad things for the game.

It's really awful about the layoffs, but I kinda expected it as companies are usually restructured after a buyout like this. My interest in their games just went down though. Why get rid of the idea man? I don't see good things for Everquest Next unfortunately.

I'm going to guess it's because his ideas didn't involve maximum milkage of the F2P concept. My cynicism is telling me that they're going to put someone in charge who cares about the bottom line more than anything else. Georgeson had nothing but enthusiasm for EQ:N and was great with PR. I'm extremely curious who he'll be replaced with and how the PR is going to work now.

Also: lol @ people who bought H1Z1. How excited are people for this game now?

And is Planetside 2 for PS4 officially not going to be released now?

EQ Next will become nothing more than IP the mgmt company can leverage. Anyone who thinks these will be actual released titles is deluded.

It's in closed beta on PS4 right now.