Another Sony purchase potential (Club Penguin)

[Venkman]

By way of various news aggregators linking to Tech Crunch and PaidContent, it looks like Sony is in talks with a company representing Club Penguin in a potential sale of them to Sony.

Lots of speculation in those articles, but here's my take:

This is win-win for both parties.

• It could be a way for any Sony group to get into the more social worldy type MMOs.
• It could be a way for them to finally reach kids. ToonTown alone doesn't cut it.
• Could be a way for Club Penguin to grow to heights as yet unheard. A few guys in a vertical company versus BIG HUGE COMPANY and all the dollars/perks that go with it. CP was only going to get so big on its own, cute and interesting and garage-y-ness aside.
• That it could end up in other Sony groups beyond SOE is interesting. Could be like the Viacom/Maplestory vs MTV/Virtual Laguna Beach thing. SOE focuses on traditional sub-based time-sinky games while another Sony group extends into new business models and audiences.
• There's such a low overhead for a game like this, the PS3 could easily handle it. While cooking and cleaning. The name recognition could actually convince them they could sell more consoles, though I'd argue that loudly since those kids already play this on even 10 year old boxes.

My one question about this though is why they'd pay potentially $500mil for a Flash-based MMO when it could cost them 1/100 of that to build one themselves. Sure they wouldn't get the 4.5mil uniques, but then, CP didn't have that at first either. I know it's hard for a big company to have the patience for a slow growth game. But they would be spending so much less to make one, they could afford to wait for growth. And the lower budget/tighter team would let that team have more freedom to be unique and interesting in the same way that a bunch of guys came up with the idea of playable penguins.

[Yegolev]

Something to do with Home on PS3?  Management does wacky things if they think it increases money?

[Venkman]

Home seems like a directed-play version of Virtual Laguna Beach, all 3D, big graphics, force recognition of wunderkind processor, etc. The PS3 could run Club Penguin projected onto a TV screen in Home for as little overhead CP requires :)

[Grimwell]

I could be entirely wrong, since I don't sit in on any board room meetings, but I think this is that 'other' Sony, SCEA and whatnot.

A game like ClubPenguin would be interesting in SOE's suite, but I don't think this is the Sony I work for.

[Venkman]

It's why I said "Sony" and not "SOE" :) There's a few Sony's this could go into, which is part of the fun.

[NxJoeW]

I am not going to hand out any judgement on how this might go, however the operation of these types of games is drastically different than that of what most of us are used to. They would have to keep it far away from SOE.

My guess is they will use it to build their http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/surfsup/index.html

As SPE is SOEs mamma, it will most likely go to SOE. But either way... should be interesting.

[Sir Fodder]

Hmm, a stoned chicken and smug penguins, looks interesting  :-D. There is a lottery link up on that Surf's Up site for daily free lifetime memberships to Club Penguin.

[Mi_Tes]

This has been one of my son's favorite games.  Definately a great game for the targeted audience.  Suprised someone hasn't snapped it up before.

[Venkman]

The CP people are very interesting. They're not what you'd think of a vertically oriented MMO cash cow provider. As I haven't heard anything since the above article, maybe the discussions are taking too long, or have stopped, or something else?

[Venkman]

Welp, found out the answer to that question. Sony's out but someone else is in, they don't know who.

Not sure who’s the other one in the fray, but someone is, and Sony is out. We reported last month that Sony was in advanced talks to acquire the two-year-old kids focused social gaming site ClubPenguin for about $450 million. The talks broke down some days ago, and price was one of the factors...our sources tell us the asking price went up beyond $500 million, and Sony balked at the price. Among the other reason that could have broken the talks, as Staci mentioned in our earlier post: “Sony is trying to get a handle on churn. We’ve also been told the founders are interested in committing some profits to charity and Sony wants to be sure its margins are protected. Why Sony? The subscription base is appealing as are the prospects of fitting it in with Playstation and possibly PSP. No obvious ad potential.”

What we now know is someone else is in the game, but not sure who