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Sony’s Talks To Buy ClubPenguin Off

By Rafat Ali - Thu 14 Jun 2007 08:50 PM PST

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.

Posted in: Companies, Sony, Entertainment, Gaming, Social Media, VC+M&A

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From Jerry Fri 15 Jun 2007 06:09 AM

These ClubPenguin guys seem noble, but must be living in a fantasy world. To try to dictate to someone that a portion of the profits have to go to charity I think is insane.

Seems to me that the ClubPenguin guys should take their $500m and spend it how they believe it should be spent, not tell someone else what they should do with their money.

“You can marry my daughter, but you’ll need to have sex with her sister as well.” Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad.

From Kman Sun 17 Jun 2007 08:55 AM

Sony has already announced a young/female targeted online experience for the PC and PS3 on June 11 called Free Realms that is very much targeting with the same type of content.

http://www.sonyprotectiongroup.com/?/content/view/138/1/

From mculbert Tue 19 Jun 2007 02:47 PM

Churn...lol.

Want to see churn? Turn it into a paid+advertising site in an attempt to recover an insane purchase price. I know I’ll pull my two kids’ accounts as soon as it happens.

You know Sony would have done it, and whoever else is bidding will do it too.