Have a good weekend
Thanks, you too. Here are some details of Verant/Sony goings-on:
thestandard.com
May 31, 2000
Sony: Thanks for Everything. Buh-Bye
Over 50 employees at the electronics giant's online-gaming unit in L.A. were fired after a 10-minute farewell.
By Kenneth Li
Soon-to-be-appointed Sony Online Entertainment chief Kelly Flock is cleaning house, shuttering the last remaining office at the electronics giant's online-gaming unit in Los Angeles, according to Sony sources.
More than 50 employees ? one hired as recently as Tuesday ? were given their pink slips at 2 p.m. PDT today, following a terse 10-minute speech given by Flock to a roomful of crestfallen employees.
"Everyone's really fucking pissed," says one employee, who described Flock's speech notifying the staff that their last day would be this Friday as "very cut-and-dried."
The layoff notices were anticipated, but the perceived nonchalance with which they were delivered echoed an early April announcement by Sony of America CEO Howard Stringer that the company was closing down its New York headquarters, laying off more than 60 employees. In a poor effort to lighten the mood at the meeting, Stringer told employees that they essentially would be paid "50 cents for every year worked at Sony," one former employee recounted.
Sony plans to make a formal announcement about closing the Los Angeles online-entertainment unit shortly, but the company declined to elaborate on today's news. Also expected in the announcement is confirmation that Flock, rumored to be up for the top job at the unit, will officially be named to the post, according to sources. There are only a handful of employees left from the original 150-employee team.
The closure of both offices brings an end to the legacy of former Sony Online Entertainment President Lisa Simpson , who helped nurture one of the first successful online projects at Sony of America. Launched in 1997, the unit created what was then a thriving online-gaming division within the global Japanese company, offering both free and subscription-based games-related content. Among its gaming successes, the unit linked up with popular Sony-owned game shows such as Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy to create online gaming versions of both.
In addition, Simpson, who was lured away from Sony in April by former Prodigy colleague Russ Pillar to become CEO of CBS Internet Group, helped create an online advertising backbone for Sony's entire U.S. division, selling ads for other Sony divisions, including music and pictures.
The bloodletting in the Sony Online Entertainment saga provides clues as to what Flock's new strategy for the fledgling company might entail. The core focus of operations will center on the games-developer studio Verant in San Diego, which is charged with creating more hardcore online games, a genre with which Sony has done well. Most notably, the subscription-based medieval adventure game EverQuest serves more than 500,000 subscribers who pay $9.89 a month for the game, plus up to $50 for the off-the-shelf software.
Other games coming down the pike include the sequel EverQuest 2, a new game called Sovereign, a Star Wars- related game and a proposed project connected to the upcoming PlayStation 2.
Flock previously ran the Sony PlayStation gaming studio 989 Studios but left earlier this year after Sony Computer Entertainment America rolled the unit back into the parent company. He has since been in discussions with Stringer and was lured back to the firm in April to lead Sony Online Entertainment.
Insiders say Flock didn't think much of the online entertainment unit's free offerings, which were advertising-supported, and chose instead to focus his energy on more-lucrative subscription games.
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