Sony Online Entertainment Becomes Daybreak Game Company

Ok, SONY bought SOE to make them money. Columbia is looking for the same. No one is the villain.

The thing is that mobile games are "the thing" now and we might see Daybreak changing a little of its development to that.
I have canceled my subscription prior to this and now I'm sure that I did the right thing on the right time. I still have some 2.000 SC and I will hold them. We did saw it coming when they came with all that talking about removing monthly Station Cash with membership when was said it was for making the company more "sellable".

I had great fun here, since "Infantry" and for the last 18 month on PlanetSide It was worth, but I don´t want to see my character go away with all the time I invested on this game. So SOE or DayBreak please give us some info and what to expect.

Thank you.

Well I least I tried and that's the least I can do. In fact by sending that email it speaks VOLUMES because so few people actually take the time to write a letter about a specific topic or issue.

inb4 subscriptions become mandatory and playerbase dies, or the SC depot becomes massively pay to win with OP new weapons and features that destroy all current free weaponry only being available through cash. Calling it right now.

An investment firm or money-grubbing company that doesn't give a damn about video games on a personal level is NEVER good for gamers. They care about the money they can make and nothing else. It isn't like a typical game company filled with people who started out because they wanted to make fun and cool games. As opposed to a company filled with people who are solely in it to make money. -_- How anyone can view this as a good thing is beyond me.

I just hope the game doesn't die sooner than later since I enjoy Planetside 2 a lot.

well there is one important thing that hasn't been adressed yet:
do we all have to make a reddit account now because forums.station.SONY.com will have to shut down?
and as you didn't even bother with making forums for Hizzy i doubt you'll bother with making new forums on a seperate website...

I like how Smedley tweeted about making XboxOne games.

SOE only put out one console game that I'm aware of, DCUO. How could you interpret those comments as anything but (insert whatever you'd like here folks).

Why this happened:
- Sony sold SOE because it didn't produce enough profit

What this means:
- Since CN bought SOE they probably have plans on making profit with it. This means we may expect a sudden turn in PS2 development soon.
- SOE (now Daybreak wtf) will most likely receive additional funds from CN, which means faster game development.

just my 2 cents...

So who the heck are Columbus Nova anyway?

Their website has very little information about the company itself, seems very shady to me...

http://columbusnova.com/

Do you really think anyone would buy SOE just to get their hands on an old and unprofitable game like PS2?

It's obvious that H1Z1 is the big deal here since it's a DayZ clone - that game sold millions of copies.

These people obviously want to make big bucks on H1Z1 and I doubt they will even keep PS2 running for much longer.

Yup seems very likely to be the same to me.

Sony always owned SOE. (it has been passed around as a Sony subsiduary a bit, and split and re-merged a bit too, but always within the Sony umbrella)

Now it has been completely sold off after having been part of Sony since 1995 or 1998 depending on how you want to look at it.

Well there is the answer to the player retention and revenue figures and what happens when you have a 'I play but I won't pay' player base.

Sony couldn't make it add up and have realised that F2P just doesn't pay, which with the little I can know is what I think.

The whole model is just an excuse to sell a dream, never deliver and still make revenue out of it.

If a publisher doesn't have the faith in their product to release it fit for market at day 1 retail then it really does need to be avoided, although with today's gamers Early Access and F2P will continue to thrive and deliver those £/$/E.

People are complaining on the H1Z1 forums that the alpha isn't complete a couple of weeks after release.

Well, it cant get any worse than it already is so... Congrats to everyone i think.

There are ways to do F2P right, the constant is keeping the community alive and happy and/or satisfied. If CN doesn't allow this then Daybreak will fall flat on their face. Hopefully they have SOME knowledge and understanding enough not to do this, but as Einstein said in Command and Conquer Red Alert (RIP) "Time will tell. Sooner or later, time will tell."

i think the other einstein quote is more fitting:
there are 2 infinite things: the universe and human idiocy. but i'm not sure with the universe.

Daybreak : Ultimately success will come down to how well H1Z1 turns out.

SOE / Sony got a huge influx of cash for the early access sales on steam. I suspect once the first golden egg was laid by SOE, SONY took the money and wanted out of game development. Temptation must have been strong. Locally I know of several locations in Canada which have closed. Many people laid off who worked for SONY on the ground retail level. Maybe I am wrong, maybe EA funds from H1Z1 will remain with Daybreak. It just seems kinda more likely that SOE was sold to band-aid the losses from Sony. Sadly there is a human cost associated to this story and the need must have been dire for the company to give up future revenue from H1Z1 & Planetside 2 on PS4.

I wonder if Daybreak gets to keep the money provided for H1Z1, or if SONY will take it leaving them only with funding from Columbia. In any case Columbia isn't going to WANT Daybreak to fail. There is going to be a small very critical window of time where they are the good guys, provide the money and test "Daybreak" and its development team. Right now is probably the best time for something tragic like this to happen. A potentially hugely popular game, H1Z1, and the little known gem that is Planetside 2 soon to be offered up on PS4. There is a considerable chance for Daybreak to succeed. Columbia must see this. So lets hope Daybreak / SOE have learned from their mistakes (as we all do) and hit the ground running going forward.

I don't think I have to say any more then that. I am going to remain optimistic - I am NOT going to cancel my subscription since at this time it matters the most for the future of Planetside 2. This news probably caught more then just a few of us community members off guard.

If anyone is reading this I would encourage Daybreak to award player title "Founder" during their transition period for those of us who stick through and keep supporting Daybreak with membership despite the uncertainty. Personally I suspect PS4 players are going to really like Planetside 2. Here is to hoping my optimism isn't blind.

~Cheers

I can smell the Pay To Win model coming, this is not the type of model I want to play.

Instead of logging in I canceled my subscription in regards to this news. If they don't turn this into Pay To Win I will resubscribe, but until then I don't want to give my money to Daybreak.

Not to drag your post through mud or anything... However I really think SONY mobile is to blame for the losses Oct 2014. There is no way Planetside 2 can come close to missing the mark and loosing 1.2 BILLION. What has likely happened is management at SONY is going through and focusing on a restructure. A company I worked for did it too after bad things happened, and product expired at hardcore mind boggling rates... some management got fired, marketing was hired, logistics employees need medical attention, and lots of locations for retail closed.

SOE was a tiny part of SONY and sadly was cut off and sold. For that to work SOE would need to be profitable for it to get a decent offer from Columbia. Most likely SONY needed the money that badly to keep its core businesses operational. Its more expensive to open new locations later on for expansion, then to try and sustain existing. The less they have to sell off the better, especially if its something SONY feels they can recover from.

Lets be honest here, SOE wasn't getting much from SONY. PS2 developers were peeled away and had to work on H1Z1. Coders needed to fix harasser handling issues were tasked with projects for H1Z1 and couldn't do bug fixes. That poor man! Imagine being the only person in a company capable of fixing something. Besides the incredible job security... thats not good for Daybreak. It shows how stretched thin they are for development time. SOE has been working very hard with very little... at least that is how it has seems for a while based on my reddit, lurking, and forum browsing, here and on PS2 Issues tracker, among other googly habits.

Anyway just my 5 cents because gov took away our pennies in Canada....

It has always amazed me that PS2 is ftp and I personally have no objection to a one off payment for the game aka GW2 or a nominal monthly sub.

PS2 is unlike any other game and I am a premium member because I wanted to support the developers (although the premium membership appears to have vanished yesterday for me )

I sincerely hope that PS2 can get an injection of cash, time and expertise now because there is nothing out there that comes close to the PS2 experience.

My sympathy to any SOE people that have lost their jobs. I think the devs did the best they could with their limited resources.

I'm glad to see that Higby is taking peoples concerns seriously with his latest twitter

"Huge changes this morning! I switched from Starbucks Doubleshot to Vita Coco Cafe coconut water coffee and it feels a lot more wholesome!"

I know one person I'd downgrade to "Lavatorial cleansing operative"!

Soe or now Daybreak

we have been through good and bad

we all want good

so please dont **** up

I can't help but compare the name to the Ethan Hawke movie.

The one with the blood sucking vampire corporation that sucked the life out of almost every human till their own staff was hungry.

then came along Ethan Hawke and showed them that there was a better way... a cure from blood sucking.

He showed them that they can break into the daylight and be human again.

maybe DGC (Daybreak Game Company) is the cure from vampire Sony. Maybe DGC is the vampire ready to suck our lives.

Either way... in the end, I hope Ethan Hawke (whoever that turns out to be) can keep all SOE games...


F2P

This game needed harsh boss. Game performance in last 6 monts drastically decreased. This game needs better optimizations for AMD users, or just make new engine that will work on 4 core machines. Or just die like all failed projects did.


Or make Planetside 3 that all players can play normally (without lags, hit detection, low fps...) - 64bit client, dx11 support....