Analysts seem to support Sony's decision:

Update:GamesIndustry.biz spoke with some analysts following the news. "While the PlayStation 4 has sold well Sony has really been cutting back on investment in game development. SOE worked on massive projects that really were not a good fit for the target PlayStation audience. So it is not a huge surprise. It just wasn't fitting into Sony's current strategy," commented DFC Intelligence's David Cole.

He continued, "It is hard to say how much it was sold for. I imagine Sony had to eat a lot of development costs and Columbus Nova probably got it fairly cheap. But that is just speculation. It is definitely a positive for SOE/Daybreak because I think they were hampered by being tied to the Sony corporate behemoth and now they can concentrate on their core market. Also the other option would probably have been Sony just comopletely shutting them down."

Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter is largely in agreement that SOE was no longer a good fit for Sony as a whole. "I think that Sony Online is profitable, but not particularly strategic for Sony. Remember, they are a consumer electronics manufacturer, so to some extent, owning movie and television studios makes sense in order to drive Blu-ray player and TV sales. However, owning an online gaming company isn't a great fit, particularly as games are shifting increasingly to a free-to-play mobile model," he said.

"I would imagine they weren't shopping SOE so much as they received an unsolicited offer, and I think that they will be fine without contribution from that side of the business. I'm glad Smedley went with the company, as he built that business from scratch and deserves a lot of credit."

IDC Research Director Lewis Ward also noted that the move could be viewed in some ways as Sony doubling down on its strong console business. "It sold off its VAIO PC brand about a year ago if you recall, so the sale of SOE might be read as a further shift away from PC-centric hardware, software and service businesses. Given the meteoric rise of smartphones and tablets and Sony's market position I don't blame them, honestly," he said, adding that the sale will "make the annual books look much better than they would have otherwise" for Sony as it closes its fiscal year in March.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2015-02-02-soe-acquired-becomes-daybreak-game-company

pretty surprising news but i've never played a SOE game so i'm not sure how big of a deal it is to me. planetside 2 would have been neat as an exclusive i suppose. in theory everquest next too but i'll bet it sucks on consoles and 98% of the userbase will be PC regardless.

Thanks, Burek. I also remember that sometime last year, Sony's gaming division lost money due to a write-down from SOE.

What the hell??

Obviously. It's a good decision, and as I said it should have already happened earlier.

Here is SOE's stellar record on the PS3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Untold_Legends:_Dark_Kingdom Just that one game.

And this was after Everquest was already a forgotten name, then PS2 came out only to quickly have population problems due to so few people playing a free to play game. Then they took over 3 years to bring a closed beta to a PS platform.

As I said before, this will make PS4 even stronger. They probably didn't get much money, but maybe enough to form a new console studio.

Or even turn around and buy Capcom or Sega.

No, lol. They aren't going to do that. It's good that they get the money but they're not gonna put it towards that. At most they'd buy a studio that currently acts as second party, don't see it going beyond that.

Another thing worth mentioning is that with the amount of F2P support the PS4 is getting from other companies (including exclusives like Deep Down, Let it Die, DDO etc), just makes keeping SOE even more redundant.

Great news

Meh, Sony isn't losing anything significant IMO.

Glad to see them go. I always hated that they were basically internal competition. They never supported Playstation, and when they finally got around to it, they were always years late. Hopefully, Kaz will continue to cut away at the non Playstation branches of Sony. I really want to see Sony Mobile either sold or rolled into SCE.

Kaz seems to be doing a great job moving to his One Sony future.