My brain just exploded. I blame Schild.
I’d comment… but seriously. What would I say? Other than my head lolling and going “duurrrrrr”.
Edit: sadly for the cause of random discordia, but happily for everyone working at SOE, John Smedley rang up Massively and said “Uh… whaaa? No. No. What are you people smoking? NO.”
So instead, I leave you with scenes from the next ZapakOE MMO.
Edit Again: the original story’s been pulled from the Times of India site. Link now goes to Reuters’ coverage of the non-story!
Broken Toys 
I find it funny that people would trust John Smedley. Now I have to question the Economic Times articles I used for my last Economics paper -_-
I think SOE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Pictures (not SCEA). So unless Sony Pictures is looking to sell the online branch, this story is unlikely. If there was a deal being worked out, I would expect Smedley to say nothing. That being said: I have no doubt we will see purchases like this in the future, as large foreign publishers look to expand. I would expect to see Shanda go shopping sometime in the near future, for example. They have a ton of cash on hand and are growing rapidly quarter over quarter. It could come as a shock to American developers who aren’t used to anticipating foreign buy-outs. Anticipate them and study the big foreign market leaders in development and publishing.
“It could come as a shock to American developers who aren’t used to anticipating foreign buy-outs. ”
You’d think the guys who used to work for Verant before SONY Online Entertainment bought them over might be prepared.
That video is going to give me nightmares.
Yeah, when the CEO of a company has no idea how a story about the company being bought out got started, that’s a sign that the company needs to seriously re-evaluate its outbound communications.
Verant was always a Sony brand — it’s not as though they were ever an independent studio, but at one point they were at least partly under Sony’s “games” labels, including SCEA and 989 Studios. But yes, it seems unlikely that this is at all real, provided a little extra thought. The fact that anyone might consider it as real, though, well, see above. The fact that India Times hasn’t yet issued a retraction is highly suspect.
Well no one believed that EA was gobbling up Mythic, and that was denied a million times over before it happened. The Blizzard/Activision merger dropped without warning. Bioware getting bought out was fast and quick. Hell, even Sigil’s demise was denial central before SOE bought them out.
Secondly, Smedley goes to EQ2flames to deny the rumor? Yet there on the official EQ2 site, his own blog, and a dozen more OFFICIAL websites. Odd that he chooses the epi-center of rumor mongering to quell the flames on this one!
There is more stink to this story than meets the eyes.
Yes, I like stoking the fire.
C’mon, this is an easy one. According to the article SOE has approx $150million in annual revenue and a purchase prices of $300million. It’s just silly. There’s no way SOE would get sold for 2x annual earnings.
Anyway, the whole thing is ridiculous. Facinating that it got published though…
SunSword are you serious? We live in the day and age where companies THAT MAKE ZERO ECONOMIC PROFIT (often times are in the red) get bought out for multi-millions simply for their IPs and potential. SOE may not be YouTube, but they are both online focused companies and right now there is stupid money being thrown their way.
My point was that a company like SOE would sell for a much higher ratio on earnings.
“Secondly, Smedley goes to EQ2flames to deny the rumor? Yet there on the official EQ2 site, his own blog, and a dozen more OFFICIAL websites. Odd that he chooses the epi-center of rumor mongering to quell the flames on this one!”
Exactly my point. WTF, Smed. Guess he must have family over the holiday weekend.
The India times link is gone but there’s always the Reuter’s article (and SOE’s rebuttal).
I don’t think Sunsword is too far off. If SOE was struggling why buy Vanguard? If SOE was being “shopped around”, as the IT article claimed, why only sell for $300M? It seems suspicious to sell a division that is at least making some money for only two times the annual earnings. If we’re talking foreign capital, I’d be aiming for 5-6X minimum. 2X would scream “Fire sale” and, worse, make investors nervous about Sony in general (and stock go down, go boom). It just doesn’t add up.
Possibly but consider that EVERYONE denies that they are being bought out by EA before being bought out by EA. Think about it…
EA: We want to buy you
You: Uhm, no thanks. I like my soul and creative control over what we do
Reporter: Is EA buying you?
You: Nah
EA: Here’s a check with a lot of zeroes on it. SELL TO US OR ELSE
You: *closes mouth* uhm… SOLD!
Typical Smed, actually. Smed has gone to fan sites before to respond to this kinda stuff with regards to game related rumors so I can’t say that this surprises me. Consider, also, that he probably has lots of Sony stock (see previous point).
My bad Sunsword, missed that line.
CEO denials of a sale carry little if any weight in press releases.
But the original numbers posted in the story dont seem to make any sense.
Nor does the idea of moving marketing and content creation to Indea – those are the only 2 catagries that probably would remain in the US for the existing games.
It almost seems like someone purposefully made the story as unbelievable as possible.
Used to be. About a year or so ago SOE became SOE, LLC owned mostly by SPE and partially by SCEA.
SOE is an important part of Sony’s overall digital entertainment strategy – a field which they are extremely unlikely to abandon. Even if some strange happenstance occurred which compelled Sony to dump SOE, it’s more likely they’d merge it into whatever they were replacing with than to actually let it go (and not likely at all that they would just be dropping it and not replacing it).
Besides, haven’t you all noticed that when rumors are true, a company spokesperson say, “It is company policy not to comment on speculation and rumors.”
When they really aren’t true, then a CEO comes right out and denies the rumor.
But don’t tell anyone that I told you that, or else they’ll start following company policy all the time and we won’t be able to tell.
$300m? Woah mama big big spender!!! Honestly I don’t think they could buy one of SOE’s games with that much (or that little as the case may be).
having just been through a successfull takeover bid last year, the price of our tiny ass division was approx x8 our yearly net revenue and was considered ‘fire sale’ by a company looking to sell off ‘non-performing’ assets.
so yha…only 300mil? wtf mate. I’d belive about bill and a half with exclusive contract options and all that jazz.
MJ pretty much disproved the point that CEOs wont lie about impending sales.
Im not at all saying this story was legit. But I just cant buy Jeff Freemans thoughts on a CEOs word.
#16
true, we in tech support had this phrase long before House stole it “Everybody lies. Whether they know it or not, they lie.”
and in general it’s alot easier to lie to a directory around the holidays when everyone who’s in on it can be ‘out’ but it’s a horrible thing to do.
sadly exects these days are rewarded for success and rewarded more for failure. see circuit city and k-mart.
at myself…err, director of a division instead of a true ceo…grr. cant’ type.
Me either, mostly.
This reminds me of the story last year in India of a business school whose press releases with all these accolades and boasts and Indian papers printed it without question. it became a big story when a blogger exposed them and had to quit his job at IBM. After some legal threats and noisemaking some major Indian papers finally looked into it and discovered it was all made up.
The rumor didn’t have to come from SOE at all, it probably came from that company, in fact that original story read suspiciously like a press release that was just copied to the paper, which happens a lot.