Feels like someone is closing the end of a book on this one. To think all those SOE games I played, for years for that first one.
Time to jump back in to Everquest again, for a last sightseeing tour. I’m going to be eminently sad when that game closes down, still the biggest impact of any game for me.
Interesting comment on the new owners from a poser over at RPS
Some fun facts: Columbus Nova is owned by the Renova Group: http://www.renova.ru/en/structure/company/detail/130/
The Renova Group was recently-ish in the news: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/u-s-court-charges-renova-group-billionaire-duo-for-armed-takeover-in-russia/502610.html
So SoE is now owned by a company owned by a company whose founders hired Russian mercenaries to take over a Siberian oilfield and bribed Russian officials in order to gain control of a Russian-based subsidiary of a Canadian oil company.
No idea what this means for Planetside 2, though.
Companies usually don’t pay money to buy other companies only to shut them down. That’s a pretty stupid business strategy. Generally, in this situation, the buyer thinks they can get more money from the business entity than the seller.
If you took SOE’s business and expanded it from just PS4s to Xbox One, that would be a market expansion of ~50% for what would be way less than a 50% cost increase. My guess is that it’s that sort of thing that SOE was bought for.
How many of SOE’s games do you think are made for consoles as well? I can give you a hint - its not many. Thus, there is really no 50 percent market expansion.
That’s not true at all. Actually it’s a likely scenario. SOE took a hefty charge due to costs developing H1Z1 and EQN, so they were an attractive target (cheap). So you purchase the company, fire everybody, chop it up, and sell the pieces; the IP, patents, rights to run the games, marketing access to customers, etc. It’s worth more dead than alive.
There’s no indication that’s what they’re doing in this case, but it is very common.
If this isn’t what happens I’ll be very surprised.
People predicted the same thing about Harmonix when Columbus Nova bought them in 2010.
Planetside 2, DC Universe Online, H1Z1. EverQuest Next, Hell, even Free Realms. The only remotely modern SoE game that hasn’t been explicitly talked about for console is Landmark, and that could yet happen too.
They have in-house expertise for console, and I think that’s where their future value is. They’ve said their F2P games perform quite well on console. Given that they were already reaching for console, Xbox One makes a ton of sense once they’re free of Sony’s restrictions.
Yeah, it’s possible they bought SOE just to draw and quarter them. I find it highly unlikely. Folks often exaggerate the value of that sort of thing. And in the MMO space, IPs aren’t where the value is – especially with SOE’s vanilla genre entries. Everquest is no Game of Thrones. Everquest is, however, a slow-but-steady revenue generator as long as you don’t tamper with the game or player base.
I agree, I really don’t think they’re going to be killed and chopped up in this particular case. I was just saying it’s fairly common, in response to your previous post.
From what an SOE rep told me in 2007 (ancient history now) EQ1 was the big revenue draw. This was only 3 years after EQ2 launched.
Having only dipped my feet in EQ1 and 2 over the last year, EQ1 still feels more populated. EQ2 really needs a server merge again.
Planetside 2, sure, but H1Z1 and Everquest next as well? I doubt those will be out in the next few years, if even then, or at all. I happen to be in the Planetside 2 beta, and from a game thats been released for a few years, there a long way still till its ready on the PS4. Now, on top of that, they have to get H1Z1 ready as well? They are so far behind on schedule with EQNExt that I don’t see it happening anytime soon either. I’d actually love to be wrong, but I doubt it.
Edit: In Denmark we have various ways to see how well a company is doing, with access to its public reconds and earnings - Is there anything the like in the US, where we can see yearly earnings, income and the like for companies?
I’m not sure why anyone would think a breakup is likely…this isn’t a Larry the liquidator type of situation. The only asset that SOE has that has any kind of value in the market that you could break off and sell is the Everquest IP and that’s not really worth anything. The value of SOE is in the potential success of EQNext. You buy SOE only if you want to make a bet that EQNext is successful.
Sony as a corporation is in the process of selling off it’s under performing assets and the potential success of EQnext is not worth the continued loss they’ll have to book to fund development. It makes sense for a private equity firm though. I’m guessing it was relatively cheap; they have to fund year or two of development and if EQNext is successful they get fairly nice ROI.
Interestingly enough, the same guy who bought Harmonix from Viacom in 2010 is a senior managing partner at Columbus; so there is some game business DNA there.
I’m not sure ‘soon’ matters. It’s the long view that matters. They bought a business with a lot of inertia (for better and worse), not just next month’s revenue.
They couldn’t have these games running on XB1 ‘soon’ by any measure anyway, so if the PS4 versions were already off in the distance, a simship actually becomes more viable.
All I know is their work on getting PS2 ready for PlayStation is that it keeps breaking shit on the PC version…
Yes, you can use EDGAR. Also, publicly traded companies generally make such information available on their websites, under investor relations or something similar.
Note that Sony is not an american company, and Columbus Nova is a privately-held company.
Thanks! Thats exactly what I was looking for. While Sony isn’t an American company, I’m guessing SOE is though. Its always fun to look at things like this!
Article about the purchase up on Fortune. Nothing really really earth shattering and no real details, but interesting.
This part is really interesting
“SOE didn’t support any of Sony’s consumer electronics businesses, so it was easy to sell.”
, since PS4 is part of Sony’s consumer electronic businesses, but SOE didn’t support it? This further reinforces my opinion that we are less likely to see any of SOE’s games on consoles in the near future…or even less-near future.
, since PS4 is part of Sony’s consumer electronic businesses,
Technically it isn’t. In Sony’s classification, consumer electronics covers phones, cameras and TVs. PS4 falls under “game”, which is a separate business line under electronics.