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Smedley announces SOE is no more, becomes Daybreak Game Company
In a surprising move, CEO John Smedley just announced on Reddit that Sony Online Entertainment is leaving behind its Sony roots and becoming Daybreak Game Company after being acquired by the investment firm Columbus Nova. This change allows the company to publish online games on multiple gaming platforms, including the XBox. Smedley also assured players via Twitter that all of the games in the company's portfolio are staying and will continue to be a part of the new company. Here's the full announcement plastered on the official forums of each of the company's games: Dear Players, Partners and Friends, Today, we are pleased to announce that we have been acquired by Columbus Nova, an investment management firm well known for its success with its existing portfolio of technology, media and entertainment focused companies. This means that effective immediately SOE will operate as an independent game development studio where we will continue to focus on creating exceptional online games for players around the world, and now as a multi-platform gaming company. Yes, that means PlayStation and Xbox, mobile and more! As part of this transition, SOE will now become Daybreak Game Company. This name embodies who we are as an organization, and is a nod to the passion and dedication of our employees and players. It is also representative of our vision to approach each new day as an opportunity to move gaming forward. So what exactly does this mean for you? It will be business as usual and all SOE games will continue on their current path of development and operation. In fact, we expect to have even more resources available to us as a result of this acquisition. It also means new exciting developments for our existing IP and games as we can now fully embrace the multi-platform world we are living in. Our games and players are the heart and soul of our organization, and we are committed to maintaining our portfolio of online games and pushing the limits of where we can take online gaming together. Thank you for your continued support. See you in game! The Team at Daybreak
Norrathian Notebook: Talking EverQuest II's 10th anniversary with Holly Longdale
The big 1-0. EverQuest II has just joined the ranks of games in their double digits; today marks the 10th anniversary for the fantasy game. And while that's a pretty impressive feat in itself, just growing older isn't all that has happened to EQII in the past year. There have been plenty of content updates (and a change in how those update occur), holiday celebrations, and major news happenings during the course of the past 12 months. However, instead of just highlighting the major events and changes of the year in a standard retrospective piece, I'm going to do something a little different this year. On top of wandering down memory lane, I've pulled in Senior Producer Holly Longdale to answer a few questions and address some current concerns on the minds of players. Longdale talks about the high price of both the Altar of Malice Collector's Edition and the new Aerakyn race as well as shares some fun facts about who's been working on the game since the beginning.
Hackers' bomb threat allegedly reroutes SOE's president's plane
Hackers who implicated themselves in this weekend's PlayStation Network outage have apparently stepped up their attacks on Sony with a casual bomb threat made over Twitter that may have diverted a plane carrying SOE president John Smedley. In addition to tweeting several mocking threats about the flight as well as an image purporting to be Smed's e-ticket, the hacker account sent this message to American Airlines: .@AmericanAir We have been receiving reports that @j_smedley's plane #362 from DFW to SAN has explosives on-board, please look into this. Smed tweeted earlier today that his plane had been rerouted to Phoenix over "security reasons." Local news stations report that the FBI is investigating the threats. [Developing]
Smed confirms one Player Studio user earned $100,000
Talking to the hosts of Game Talk Live last night, Sony Online Entertainment President John Smedley confirmed that a player has reached the $100,000 milestone for income earned on SOE's Player Studio. Player Studio allows users to create unique in-game items to sell on the SOE marketplace. When items sell in the marketplace, the user earns 40% of the sale price. Right now the toolset is only available in EverQuest, EverQuest II, and PlanetSide 2, but may release in future SOE games, including EverQuest Next and Landmark.
Brad McQuaid working on 'secret' MMO since leaving SOE
You may or may not have been aware that former Senior Game Designer Brad McQuaid was let go from SOE this past August, but either way, do not fret. The McQuaid cat has landed on his feet and is working on a "secret" MMO in conjunction with his former studio. McQuaid's personal page hints at the project: "Brad left SOE in August 2013 as part of a huge [reduction in force]. With so many jobless developers in the area and so many exciting game design ideas in his head, Brad intends to start something. He's run the ideas by John Smedley, who was visibly excited. More info will be made available on this site and elsewhere when the timing is appropriate." Meanwhile, on Twitter McQuaid set his status as "Working on sekret MMO. That is all for now." He also mentions that "going forward I intend to work as closely with [SOE] as possible." [Thanks to Marianne and Matt for the tip!]
John Smedley takes to Reddit to answer SOE layoff questions [Updated]
In response to the question about how the recent SOE layoffs will affect PlanetSide 2, CEO John Smedley took to Reddit with a few answers. He specifically stated that layoffs will not impact the development of the MMOFPS and that there is still a large team working on it, even though some from that team were let go. "It won't impact the game because we have other people who are going to take the load over. Simple as that... We carefully planned and are distributing tasks appropriately to other people on the team." Smedley also dismissed the idea that devs were let go because of the integration of Player Studio as absurd. What about the other games in SOE's portfolio? Smedley announced that a full status report on all games is planned for next week. [Update: Polygon has posted excerpts from an SOE email, quoting Smedley calling the layoffs a "horrible, sickening experience" and explaining that personnel shifts were a result of budgetary necessity not poor game sales. In fact, he hopes to rehire laid-off employees. He also promises that work on EQ Next will not slow down: "In fact you can fully expect it to ramp up and a lot of people will end up helping to make the most amazing thing we've ever done as a company."]
EverQuest Next teaser photo posted
There's your EverQuest Next, boys and girls, straight from the Smed himself. SOE President John Smedley posted a teaser photo on Twitter for the upcoming sandbox fantasy title, saying, "Very excited to show EQN at SOE Live." The photo shows a grimacing character model and various armor pieces on two screens. It's obvious that the screens are a work in progress, as the textures and colors aren't included. Although it's been lightly talked about by the studio for years now, EverQuest Next's full reveal will happen at this August's SOE Live. While we'll have to wait to see what's announced for the title, we have our own wish list of what should be included.
Smedley: 'People who don't play games have no business in this business'
Sony Online Entertainment president John Smedley is a die-hard gamer. This isn't news if you've followed SOE for more than a few minutes, as Smed has always been outspoken about what he's playing and why. He's also renowned among game journos for being a fun interview, usually to the consternation of his PR handlers. Case in point is a new sit-down with Edge, ostensibly to promote SOE's upcoming PlanetSide 2 MMOFPS (we say ostensibly because the actual content of the interview is being parceled out in future installments). For part one, Smed rips into clueless industry executives, saying that "people [who] don't play games have no business in this business. It should be the gamers-only club, I think. I can't stand people [who] don't know what they're talking about when it comes to playing these things."
SOE working on two additional PlanetSide 2 continents
Those of you enjoying er, testing the PlanetSide 2 beta have thus far been confined to a single continent. That's about to change, as Sony Online Entertainment is getting ready to Galaxy-drop a new landmass into the thick of the game's closed testing phase. CEO John Smedley took to the official forums earlier this week to provide some details. Not only is SOE working on a second continent (Esamir), but it's got a third one waiting in the wings. We are working hard on Esamir. It's getting closer and closer to a finished state where we want you guys to play on it. It's pretty awesome and very different gameplay-wise than Indar. After that, Amerish will go back to being worked on. These continents are taking longer than we expected and it's possible we end up launching with two and delivering the third shortly after launch. We're working super hard but we have some resource bottlenecks. We also are going to see how the game plays with two continents before making any final decisions, so please do us a favor and don't judge any of this before you play the game with two. Further updates, including performance, gunplay, and spawning tweaks, are all viewable on the official PS2 boards.
SOE to bring back Station Cash subscription purchases -- for a week
We reported this morning that SOE had quietly removed the option to purchase non-recurring subscriptions in its MMOs with Station Cash. SOE President John Smedley arrived on the EverQuest II forums to apologize for how it was handled and assure players that this purchase option would return for a limited time so that last-minute partakers could take advantage of it: "I'm sorry we didn't do a good job of messaging this. It was handled while we were at E3 and that was bad. Very simply put, we pulled the non-recurring subscriptions because we want a closer look at the numbers and how our overall pricing of subscriptions is impacted by it. I don't want anyone thinking they were pulled because of double SC promotions or anything like that. "We're trying to figure out the right balance of things that make our customers feel great about our pricing and balance that against our customer base as a whole. We aren't saying they are going away for good. We're just looking carefully at the data right now and how we do this right. Please be patient while we figure this out. These non-recurring subscriptions are something we're still working through and we want to make sure we do this right. Obviously as a business we have to make sure the decisions we're making good for our players, and I assure you that's what we're trying to do. "I've asked the team to put them back up for a week to let people buy them with existing SC. I'm not sure when it will be back up. Maybe today or maybe Monday (a lot of our team went to E3)."
SOE's John Smedley expresses regrets over SWG mishaps
Star Wars Galaxies may be no more, but its legacy lives on in memories, discussion, and hindsight analysis. Sony Online Entertainment's John Smedley had a frank talk with Industry Gamers in which he owns up to the mistakes of how the studio handled the title, particularly surrounding the much-maligned Combat Upgrade and New Game Enhancements. What would Smedley do if he could go back and give it another try? His first regret is launching the game before the space combat system was done, and his second is that SOE didn't talk and listen to its players more. "We would have encouraged more in-depth discussion with the community surrounding the idea of any game modifications," he said. Smedley is highly optimistic for the studio's future, particularly in its fervent belief in the free-to-play business model: "We think that 'Free to Play, Your Way' is our future. Giving players choices is the theme of how we're moving forward as a company, which means greater flexibility for our player base."
Vanguard's fourth anniversary raises new questions
Vanguard is somewhat of a unique beast among other "AAA" MMOs; it's a forgotten child that still offers great adventure, open-world excitement, and hardcore raiding. While we all have heard of the botched launch and practically dead-in-the-water development cycle of the game, the fact of the matter is that players are still playing it. You can't force a player to enjoy himself, so why are the members of the Vanguard community still playing? Is it possible that they are having a good time? Or do social ties mean more than great adventure? Could it be that players simply have not found a game that they enjoy more than Vanguard, warts and all? We asked the players on the official forums and received a total of four responses. The thread was immediately pushed down by standard complaint posts. Could it be that the community has been the worst thing for the game, a game that needs, more than anything, positive word-of-mouth? Click past the cut and we'll look into it.
Free Realms officially hits 5m users
Even though Free Realms had been rumored to hit 5 millions users last month, it was made official today at the Austin Game Developer's Conference. During John Smedley's keynote, the SOE President discussed the history of the game's development, as well as some demographic numbers. As you might imagine, it's difficult to create an MMO for kids, with an average MMO player age at 33.There was also some interesting data released about the top five marketplace items and jobs in the game. Not surprisingly, all of these top five jobs are available to free players, with Brawler taking that number one spot. Look for our complete write-up of Smed's keynote, which involves much more than just Free Realms, coming soon.%Gallery-73155%
