Sony sold Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) today to a new group of investors. SOE owns and runs numerous online games, including the Everquest franchise, Planetside, DC Universe Online and the upcoming zombie apocalypse MMO, H1Z1.
Via Forbes:
Sony Online Entertainment has met with both success and failure in recent years as it struggled to compete with some of the bigger names in the massively-multiplayer-online market.
Newly divorced from Sony, the developer’s games will now begin to move toward cross-platform releases. Expect some of these titles to make their way to Xbox One.
Hopefully plans for EverQuest Next go on without interruption. That’s one of the only MMOs I can recall being actually excited about in recent memory. That being said, new ownership always comes with some uncertainty. Rebranding is rarely the only change that comes with an acquisition.
Smedley, along with Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover founded SOE in 1995, where they helped spark the MMO genre with EverQuest. Last year, however, the company saw layoffs in both their San Diego and Austin studios.
“Interesting,” you say. “But what does that have to do with Spider-Man?
If Sony is willing to dump the online gaming company it’s had since 1995 then it might be open to selling off other divisions that have been troubled recently, too. One of which would be Sony Pictures Entertainment, which currently produces the Spider-Man films. But who would interested in buying a studio that has the rights to produce Spider-Man movies? Fox? Disney? Heh!
Keep your eyes & ears open, folks! Things may start to get interesting!
–George Berryman!
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Pandora
Amazon Music
iHeartRadio
Podbean
Amazon Alexa
Player.fm
Listen Notes
Stitcher
Well, this just keeps getting better and better!
#1: SOE is solely Sony’s MMORPG games, most of which are PC only, and have been less core to Sony’s major plans for a while. The console line is going fine, and is in no danger of being spun-off/sold. I’m sure any word on the movie studios would be more able to speculate on in March when thier yearly financials come out.
WordPress’s Spam Filter is going nutso. Started getting really nuts this weekend.
Something’s wrong with the comments.
Oh my god this news is heavy and so many questions now that need to be answered like is it even possible for the gaming division to be called Sony Online Entertainment now? Is the Playstation 4 Doomed? How does this effect its 1st Party Games? Man I wouldn’t be surprised now If Sony gives up their James Bond Movie License at this point.