Sony Online Entertainment has today announced plans to strike out on its own. After almost twenty years under the Japanese publisher’s umbrella, the now-independent studio will operate under the new name Daybreak Game Company.
During this tenure, the revered company has produced — and continues to support — titles such as PlanetSide, EverQuest, DC Universe Online and the zombie MMO H1Z1. In a press release, Sony confirmed the news, stating that SOE had been purchased outright by an American firm known as Columbus Nova.
With the completion of the transaction, SOE will now operate as an independent game development studio and will continue to focus on creating quality online games, providing excellent service to its extensive player base, while centering on its untapped potential as a multi-platform online gaming company.
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.
One of the biggest consequences of this change of hand is that SOE (or, rather, Daybreak Game Company) will now have the freedom to release their IP onto other console platforms other than PlayStation. Currently, the developing team are working on bringing PlanetSide 2 to the PlayStation 4, and it looks to be that this deal has not been affected by this recent acquisition, though it’ll be interesting to see whether Daybreak will push the MMO onto other systems as well.
As a matter of fact, the same goes for H1Z1 and the upcoming MMORPG EverQuest Next, which will now likely make an appearance on Xbox as well as Sony systems.
