Microsoft alums run new Sony game unit

[McFly]

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002170312_sony04.html

Sony's online-games division said yesterday that it has opened a development arm in Bellevue, hiring a group of ex-Microsoft game creators to run the studio.

Sony also said Ed Fries, the former head of Microsoft Game Studios, will be an adviser to the group and will help with game design and studio management.

The team will work on developing so-called massively multiplayer online games, which generally involve a vast and complex virtual world in which players interact with each other over the Internet. Sony has been the leader in this area, and its "EverQuest" is one of the genre's leading titles.

While at Microsoft, several team members had worked on a role-playing game called "Mythica," which the company dropped in mid-development last February. Microsoft also cut a few dozen positions from Game Studios in the process, saying that after evaluating the gaming landscape, it decided to reduce investments in the genre.

Matt Wilson, now executive producer of Sony's Bellevue studio, was one of the "Mythica" developers. He left Microsoft last April and founded a small gaming startup called FireAnt with some former colleagues.

"I wanted to make sure that I was still pushing on the [massively multiplayer] space really hard, and I just felt like Microsoft wasn't the place that was going to be focusing on that effort," he said.

Fries left Microsoft in January 2004, saying he wanted to stay in the game business but was looking for more balance in his life. He joined FireAnt last year. The team began talking with publishers, and by November, Sony had hired everyone but Fries and launched what it is calling Sony Online Entertainment-Seattle.

The group worked out of friends' offices for months and only recently moved to a 10,000-square-foot office in Bellevue near the Kirkland border.

Fries decided to serve as a consultant and let the team have his Segway scooter to ride around the office.

The company has the resources to help with the development of massively multiplayer games, Wilson said.
"Sony is also really interested in wanting to continue the innovation in that space," he said. "I think we wanted to be with a partner that was willing to take some risk and not just do the same old thing."

All seven in the team have worked at Microsoft. Sony plans to hire five more people for the studio by April and ramp up to 30 in the next year.

Wilson said he was flooded with résumés and phone calls yesterday within hours after Sony announced the new studio.

"The talent pool inside this area is huge," he said.

The studio isn't saying what games it will develop or what platforms they will be played on. Massively multiplayer games have traditionally been played on the personal computer, but lately some have moved over to video-game consoles such as Sony's PlayStation 2.

The studio's games could find a home on Sony's upcoming handheld game device, the PlayStation Portable, or on Sony's next-generation PlayStation console, which is expected to debut by next year.

With hundreds of thousands of game-playing subscribers willing to pay monthly fees, developing multiplayer games can be a compelling investment for companies, said Schelley Olhava, an analyst covering the video-game industry for IDC. But so far, many games in the category have the same look and feel, she said.

"The potential is there," she said. "We need to think a little differently about how we create games in this space and who are we really targeting."

Interesting.

Fredi

 

[chrisrt2]

I wonder if they give 'tours' or 'visits' in these kinds of places?
And ED needs to be fried…

 

[Qroach]

That's an interesting article. Keep inmind SOE (sony online entertainment) is a totally different division from SCEA. SOE is owned by Sony motion pictures where all the rest of sony development is owned by SCEA.

 

[McFly]

Does anyone know how many game related studios Sony has now after about ten years in the videogame industry?

Fredi

 

[Ty]

That's an interesting article. Keep inmind SOE (sony online entertainment) is a totally different division from SCEA. SOE is owned by Sony motion pictures where all the rest of sony development is owned by SCEA.

Quincy, this is to you: "That sounds a little bit fishy. "

SPDE owns SOE I believe.

 

[jvd]

Soe are the creators of Everquest 1 + 2 , Planetside , and starwars galaxies

 

[Guden Oden]

They're not the creators of any of those titles, they just happen to own the devstudio that made them...

 

[wco81]

I think SOE did Champions of Norrath and the upcoming sequel. Also doing a Norrath-like game for the PSP launch too. Forget the name.

The question is, what expertise did these former MS developers have with MMO games? Did they ship a successful title or were they just working on the one that MS pulled the plug on?

And before this recent success with WoW, was the MMO genre really growing in the US? Sure there were the diehard Everquest players but it seems like Star Wars Galaxies and Sims Online both failed to expand the market that much.

These game companies all look at $15 a month subscriptions but time and again, they've failed to expand the market beyond a few hundred thousand. Sure Lineage is big in Korea but otherwise, MMO isn't revolutionizing gaming yet.

Now game companies are talking about MMO for China but that seems more out of economic necessity because of the level of piracy there. So they make money off subscriptions rather than shrink-wrap.

 

[Ty]

They're not the creators of any of those titles, they just happen to own the devstudio that made them...

Those were all in house projects (SWG was done by the studio in Austin though but still those are SOE employees). Unlike Champions of Norrath and RTA which is done by an outsourced studio. Oh, and the PSP version is also in-house.

SWG failed for a number of other reasons. Imo, there is no reason why SWG couldn't have brought in a far larger audience than WOW other than some technical problems and some poor design decisions (e.g. they turned what should have been a game into a banal second job).

 

[Qroach]

Ty, we need to talk...

 

[ninelven]

erased

 

[Inane_Dork]

MS's internal PC developers were never all that. You can't really expect much from the rejects of that group. That's a little more harsh than I want it to be, but you get the idea.

 

[Ty]

VI made the original EQ.

VI became SOE (same exact people). Just a name change when SPDE bought them out.