Comments on: Uh… Whaaaa?

By: yunk

yunk — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 15:35:30 +0000

This reminds me of the story last year in India of a business school whose press releases with all these accolades and boasts and Indian papers printed it without question. it became a big story when a blogger exposed them and had to quit his job at IBM. After some legal threats and noisemaking some major Indian papers finally looked into it and discovered it was all made up.

The rumor didn’t have to come from SOE at all, it probably came from that company, in fact that original story read suspiciously like a press release that was just copied to the paper, which happens a lot.

By: Jeff Freeman

Jeff Freeman — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 04:18:15 +0000

Im not at all saying this story was legit. But I just cant buy Jeff Freemans thoughts on a CEOs word.

Me either, mostly.

By: theliel

theliel — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:57:10 +0000

at myself…err, director of a division instead of a true ceo…grr. cant’ type.

By: theliel

theliel — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 17:56:38 +0000

#16
true, we in tech support had this phrase long before House stole it “Everybody lies. Whether they know it or not, they lie.”

and in general it’s alot easier to lie to a directory around the holidays when everyone who’s in on it can be ‘out’ but it’s a horrible thing to do.
sadly exects these days are rewarded for success and rewarded more for failure. see circuit city and k-mart.

By: dartwick

dartwick — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 16:39:52 +0000

MJ pretty much disproved the point that CEOs wont lie about impending sales.

Im not at all saying this story was legit. But I just cant buy Jeff Freemans thoughts on a CEOs word.

By: theliel

theliel — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:33:17 +0000

having just been through a successfull takeover bid last year, the price of our tiny ass division was approx x8 our yearly net revenue and was considered ‘fire sale’ by a company looking to sell off ‘non-performing’ assets.

so yha…only 300mil? wtf mate. I’d belive about bill and a half with exclusive contract options and all that jazz.

By: Slyfeind

Slyfeind — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:58:04 +0000

$300m? Woah mama big big spender!!! Honestly I don’t think they could buy one of SOE’s games with that much (or that little as the case may be).

By: Jeff Freeman

Jeff Freeman — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 06:43:51 +0000

I think SOE is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Pictures (not SCEA).

Used to be. About a year or so ago SOE became SOE, LLC owned mostly by SPE and partially by SCEA.

SOE is an important part of Sony’s overall digital entertainment strategy – a field which they are extremely unlikely to abandon. Even if some strange happenstance occurred which compelled Sony to dump SOE, it’s more likely they’d merge it into whatever they were replacing with than to actually let it go (and not likely at all that they would just be dropping it and not replacing it).

Besides, haven’t you all noticed that when rumors are true, a company spokesperson say, “It is company policy not to comment on speculation and rumors.”

When they really aren’t true, then a CEO comes right out and denies the rumor.

But don’t tell anyone that I told you that, or else they’ll start following company policy all the time and we won’t be able to tell.

By: Dartwick

Dartwick — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:58:52 +0000

CEO denials of a sale carry little if any weight in press releases.

But the original numbers posted in the story dont seem to make any sense.
Nor does the idea of moving marketing and content creation to Indea – those are the only 2 catagries that probably would remain in the US for the existing games.

It almost seems like someone purposefully made the story as unbelievable as possible.

By: Heartless_

Heartless_ — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:59:37 +0000

My bad Sunsword, missed that line.