Originally Posted by Ant001
I find it rather dissapointing that people are talking a lot about "other" fps games.
Does this mean that we ragard SOE is such low regard now that they will be lucky to survive this debacle. I hear also that they have multipul lawsuits against them that could result in millions of dollars having to be paid out. Could this sound the death nell of a company that is already in a bad finicial state ?.
I do hope this doesn't happen, because even though most of thier contribution to modern gaming is limited they do have some great ideas for the future.
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It'll be the death of a company, but probably not the death of an idea. Think about it.
If Sony gets into so much shit that they have to wind down SOE, all assests will be redistributed and any property will be up for grabs to the highest bidder... including intellectual property. Right now SOE won't sell the rights for PlanetSide to anyone because they know how big of a cash cow it can be if done right. I mean... we're all sitting here drooling at their developer letters and rendered models, that's nothing compared to how much we wil willingly or unwillingly dish out for the actual game. So I'm thinking folks have approached them about it and been turned away due to a very high asking price.
But when a company is bankrupt, the old owners don't decide the price on anything, a court does, and they only care how much money can be appropriated to the creditors and lenders. I.E. PlanetSide's intellectual property will probably be one of those hidden treasures. If the right developer decides to dish out the couple hundred grand on it (Blizzard/EA-Dice), and if they don't modify the idea but just manifest it properly using modern technology, it could make the world of PlanetSide be every bit as good as it should have always been. Important repeat though: as long as they don't fuck with the original idea. Which doesn't have too much of a chance of happening.
On a side note though, I'd rather SOE just kept developing it. They do have great artists and they do have great brains - they just need to learn how to keep homegrown talent.