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Indian company purchases fifty percent stake in Codemasters
While some gamers in the US may not be immediately familiar with Codemasters, we know our readers across the pond will immediately recognize them as the company with the rights to publish Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons and Dragons Online, and (the "who-knows-when-it-will-release") MMO Jumpgate Evolution overseas. With that said, last year we heard that the COO at Codemasters, Tony Williams, decided to step down from Chief Organizational Officer. Not too long after that, there were rumors that Warner Brothers was looking into buying the company. Today, it seems that a company from India called Reliance Big Entertainment has pounced, and now owns a 50% stake in Codemasters. Apparently, Reliance Big Entertainment is very well known in India. It's subsidiary company, Zapak Digital Entertainment, owns the largest online gaming portal in the country as well. This gaming-specific company will be the one in charge of overseeing the investment in UK-based Codemasters. As to what this could mean for MMO gamers in the EU, we'll have to wait and see. Perhaps Reliance/Zapak will see fit to close the gap in differences from the Turbine-controlled version of Lord of the Rings Online. Or perhaps this new company will finally roll the Codemasters version of Dungeons and Dragons Online over to the same free-to-play model that has been such a huge success for Turbine in the States. No matter what, this is going to be interesting to watch. [via Joystiq]
Reliance Big Entertainment acquires 50% stake in Codemasters
Reliance Big Entertainment -- a subsidiary of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group -- is a pretty big deal in India, handling a variety of different media and entertainment businesses in the region, including movies, sports, music, internet and video games. That last item is what's most important to this story, as Reliance now has a 50 percent stake in UK-based firm Codemasters, publisher of games like Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, Dirt, Overlord and Grid. Zapak Digital Entertainment, Reliance's gaming division and India's largest gaming company, will oversee Reliance's investment in Codemasters. The company also runs an online gaming portal. "Reliance and Zapak have immense resources and will help us realize the full potential of our game coding and online excellence across so many platforms, and especially in the world's fastest growing markets," said Codemasters' CEO Rod Cousens. "The future of Codemasters has never looked brighter." [Via Develop]
Free to play MMO Cronous to launch in India
Lizard Interactive, the makers of free-to-play MMOs Cronous and Sho Online, has made an agreement with Servex of India to bring Cronous over to the Indian MMO audience.The Indian MMO scene is very much like the Asian MMO scene, where internet and gaming cafes dominate the market while at-home users only make up a small percent. To combat this, Lizard and Servex have also teamed up with Sify and Zapak -- two of the largest internet cafe chains in India. These chains will be offering special promotions and incentives for players who choose Cronous, as well as simply promoting the game in their stores.The Indian MMO scene is one of the best marketing choices right now, as the market is uncrowded and quickly gathering steam. This move is very similar to Rappelz's choice to move into the Middle Eastern market, choosing to take the costs of localization in order to tap an untapped player base.Cronous will be launching their Indian website later this month, with game service targeted for the same timeframe as well.
SOE President crushes EQ2 / Live Gamer speculation
This past weekend, Sony Online Entertainment's Grand Poobah, alias John Smedley, was out and about dousing the fires and dismissed SOE's alleged takeover by Zapak. (SOE had for a measly 300 million? What a crock.) During his flurry, Smedley also dispelled the crazy speculation talk regarding SOE's new partnership with Live Gamer over on the lovable EQ2 Flames. After the initial announcement regarding the two joining forces; the hysteria pot stirred yet again. The biggest concern was that the grey-market service would intrude on EQ2's non-Station Exchange servers."We aren't going to be allowing RMT in any way, shape or form on the non-exchange enabled EQ II servers. Period. End of statement. If we catch people, we ban them and have been for a long time now. The truth of the matter is it's very difficult to combat them, but we have people at SOE who fight the good fight each and every day. In the near future you're going to see us becoming a lot more public about this then we ever have been. I think we've done a bad job at communicating just how seriously we take this fight.We're interested in working with LiveGamer because they are unique in the RMT world due to the fact that they are pledging (and are putting technology behind it) to not buy from farmers. Farmers are the bane of our existence at SOE. They cause us endless amounts of grief and do real financial damage in a meaningful way."
Rumor: Indian gaming company to buy out Sony Online Entertainment for $300 million [update]
This story has been circulating message boards and gaming industry sites for the past few hours -- Zapak Digital Entertainment, an India-based online gaming portal similar to Pogo or Miniclip, is supposedly set to buy out Sony Online Entertainment, American developer and publisher of Star Wars Galaxies and the Everquest series, for about $300 million sometime in the next few days. It's part of Zapak's plan to "expand [their] reach in the global market," and will hopefully give the company the momentum it needs to make an impact on the gaming scene in China, their next big goal. Something about this story just doesn't sit right with us enough to report it as fact just yet. Maybe it's the source -- The Economic Times, the Indian online newspaper which broke the story, does not name any of its sources in its article, which has a number of unattributed quotes. This could just mean that they're breaking the story earlier than Zapak or SOE would have liked, and they're protecting their source, most likely an employee for one of the companies -- but it's enough to raise a skeptical eyebrow. Still, it wouldn't be the first completely surprising business deal that went down this month. (Thanks, Zak.) Update: Our sneaking suspicion that the story was false was apparently correct -- SOE CEO John Smedley told sister site Massively that the rumours are completely false; Reuters also confirms with a report that a SOE spokesperson recently spoke to them on the telephone and completely denied the Zapak buyout. SOE is currently talking to various companies in India to try to bring their games to the country, but in no way is Zapak buying them. (Thanks, Ashe, for bringing this to our attention in such an expeditious manner.)
John Smedley: Sony Online is not getting purchased by Zapak
As much fun as it is to seek out news from the intertubes, we always appreciate tips when they're submitted. Tonight we got a unique tip, from CEO of Sony Online Entertainment John Smedley. This tip came along with a small wave of similar tips, all discussing the supposed purchase of SOE by the Zapak Digital group. The article claims that SOE has been 'on the block' for two weeks, and that the group plans to purchase the Sony subsidiary for the sum of $300 million. The article further claims this is an ongoing strategic move by Zapak:The major expenses in the gaming industry is on content and marketing, and Zapak aims to reduce the cost of publishing a game by buying out those studios and relocating them to India. "This will reduce the cost drastically from $30 mn to $10mn, which will give us the advantage to channelise our funds towards marketing and other activities," the official said. Says Mr. Smedley, in response to the article:It's got a bunch of people inside SOE emailing me asking me what's going on. This story is 100% false. We aren't for sale and never have been. Nothing like this has ever been discussed with the Zapak guys. The truth is we were talking to them about distribution rights to one of our games. And we have no idea how this story got started. Thanks for clarifying things for us, John.
