Collaborative development within Sony may mean new opportunities for SOE

Times they are a-changing at stuffy old Sony Corporation, and the replacement to longtime SCE Worldwide leader Phil Harrison is making sure we know about it. Shuhei Yoshida stepped up to talk with the unofficial Sony blog ThreeSpeech recently, and offered up the view that internal development of games is going to become a lot more coordinated moving forward. SCE Worldwide Studios includes the London studio, Foster City, Sony Santa Monica, Bigbig Studios, Evolution Studios, Polyphony Digital, Zipper Interactive, Naughty Dog, Guerrilla Games, and Sony Online Entertainment. It's this last that sees us wondering about this new development alignment here.

Given the movement of SOE underneath SCE proper for the first time in the subsidiary's lifetime, can it be too long before we see cross-pollination between the 'zen garden' of Sony's MMO wing and the other development houses? Perhaps EQ-themed sackboy avatars for LittleBigPlanet? "Because we know that is the trend, we, as a company, can invest in our first-party studios; in terms of exclusive titles, our role becomes more important."
[Via]