Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

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

Does this mean that PS2 may come to Xbox One?

Wow. I did not see this coming. I think this is good news?

Now can we cancel the PS4 stuff? Servers have been crawling ever since beta started.

WOW, congrats! =)

Some information about this "investment management firm" (from the homepage: http://www.columbusnova.com):

According to this homepage this company consists of 3 people...those guys "acquired" SOE?? Are you kidding me? This sounds like cash grabbing and reselling...?
To Mr. Intrater, Mr. Epstein and Mr. Lipari: one of the projects of your newly acquired company gets beaten to death. Fix it.

Is this the wrong website, a joke or WTF? Well i´m nearly speechless...

A direct question to the guys that are in charge of this:
Will Planetside 2 still be a Free-to-play title? Will it be changed to Pay-to-win? Since the owner isn´t Sony anymore some comments from the past could be outdated.
Will Planetside 2 PC suffer under the PS4 development even further?

I would say that this can mean anything at all for players.

As they say, "Time will tell."

I guess only time will tell but having a firm of bankers at the head of a video game company can be really good or really bad.
Let's not forget that we're playing a free to play game, I hope they'll find common grounds to make ends meet.

FYI:
Acquired by investment company means $company was running really bad.

Sooo, it will either accelerate process of increasing SOE games quality or Columbus Nova will milk all SOE games for quick cash. First variant is way more possible however, and for now I think that this is a very good change. Let the money for developments flow!

Given the last six months (State of the Game, Devs leaving the team, very little new content..), this seems strikingly familiar to what happened when MMO Company Turbine was acquired by Warner Brothers. Everyone thought that it meant loads more money and assets would be coming to their games, but instead just the opposite happened - their current games got picked apart and turned into nothing more than F2P micro-transaction slot machines, and any new project that wasn't a mobile game failed miserably.

What, if anything, does this mean for the future of Planetside 2 on PC?

I don't really buy the "business as usual" thing, though I guess that's just because I don't actually understand what is happening.

Im a little worried about the PC version too (with all this multi platform stuff)
BUT, more Resources means better Servers, doesnt it??

So much ignorance about deal like this. This could be good, bad, or neutral. Basically, it depends on the hearts and minds of the money-holders.

you really think this is good news ?!
Venture capital firms are notorious for making big acquisitions like this and then BAILING the second the winds change.

SOE is a company with more failures than successes under its belt. It won’t last long in the venture capital arena, where pure profit is king and everything else is meaningless.

this is pretty much the end of PS2 and all the other games, or to be more precise the beginning of the end... for us gamers nothing but a disaster

Ever since SOE started working on planetside 2 for the PS4 things have gone down hill for the PC version, bugs just don't get fixed, server connection quality is bad nowadays and nothing new really comes out.
Now imagine if they also do this for XBox and who knows what else...

Sony has been selling off a lot of things lately because Sony as a whole is running really bad.

That said I'm not optimistic about this. I know it's easy to be cynical but being sold to a venture capital firm usually doesn't put the consumer in a better place. Most of them really don't give a **** about the product all they want is to see a return on investment. If Sony operated the same way they'd have dissolved SOE years ago.

I hope I'm wrong though.

Apparently they have a different homepage which is www.cntp.com . The one you found appears to be older (as it says in the copyright, 2006).

I think it's kind of weird that they didn't update the old homepage.

Not sure what to think of all of this, "investment managment firm" doesn't have a postive connotation when it comes to gaming.

The fact that it's an investment management firm doesn't give me much hope. Those kinds of businesses tend to snatch things up, then kill them quickly for a profit.

Yea, these guys are in it for the benefit of their investors. From other experiences like this it could go either way, a quick restructure and a further sale or keep, invest and incubate.

Although we don't and can't know the real state of the game as a business as customers I wouldn't be too worried about this, if these people want to do anything it would be keep their customers happy and where it's sensible to invest.

Good news or bad new, only time will tell. One thing is certain, over the coming months, there will be a lot of change and uncertainty surrounding Daybreak games. Personally, I will be holding back any spending until we see new policy, changes, direction, etc that the company will be making. I can predict what SOE will do with their games and development, I really have no idea what this new firm will do for sure, even if they say that it will be "business as usual" for us.