http://forums.station.sony.com/dcuop...topic_id=47694
I've been through the Prosiebensat faq recently released and distilled it into shorter detail, hopefully removing the corporate spiel in the process. It's not as short as I'd have liked and there's still a bit of repeat info in there, but it's good enough. I've thrown a TL;DR to ultra distil things at the end and I've gone ahead and highlighted the info I think PS2 players are most interested in.
General info:
Prosieben is now official publisher of all SOE games in much of Europe, with other countries to potentially be added later.
There will be regional support for games, aimed at tailoring towards individual cultures, presumably because most European countries hold very different ideals.
Prosieben partnerships will be used, specifically they mention promotional power through media and TV. Marketing benefits.
Gameplay info:
Changes MAY occur within games, specifically these would be regional, though the spiel here doesn't go into specifics the concept suggest that they would "like" to make any changes to games tailored towards individual cultures and the wants of the players within those.
Game development still resides entirely with SOE.
Server info:
SOE will host and manage the servers in Europe, not prosiebensat.
Servers locations in Europe MAY change though nothing is finalised it is being looked into.
European players WILL be able to play on US servers. US players WILL be able to play on European servers. More details on this to follow.
European players WILL be able to access beta servers, regardless of location.
Mail/chat/server cross communication will be permitted. They will not be stopping players communicating with any other servers.
Players will be able to transfer between servers based on each game's individual rules of transfer.
Marketing and Distribution info:
There are no plans for in-game advertising.
As said above, Prosiebensat has been chosen specifically for it's media and marketing benefits.
The deal appears to not be a distribution agreement, it is a user accounts and commerce agrement, focused on community and product management. What does that mean exactly? That they're in charge of user accounts and marketing and promotion of games in Europe. Though they do suggest that boxed distribution MAY be a possibility, no specifics.
There may be special content specific to prosiebensat European games for promotional purposes such as attracting new customers.
Customer Service info:
In short, all customer service for European users technical and otherwise will be handled by Prosiebensat
Accounts and payment info:
Prices will remain similar though conversions and local economics may affect pricing.
Prosieben games will have their own version of SOE cash, with similar mechanics. All billing and accounts will go through Prosiebensat
Prosieben games will have their own equivalent all access pass.
There will be a new launcher for prosiebensat games.
TL;DR: Prosiebensat taking over all accounts, billing, marketing, customer service and technical support for European players, not taking control of servers. Restatement of there being something in place to avoid region locking, more details to follow.
As for exactly what their plan is to avoid region locking, I personally think it'll be as simple as having Europeans pay and have their accounts handled via prosiebensat (therefore they earn the money for them) but allowing their access to NA servers that were previously going to only support SOE accounts. Obviously the account mechanisms seem like they were going to be different, to avoid this I just presume they're going to link the prosiebensat and SOE account mechanisms in order to avoid it.