Sony Online To Publish Third Party Titles

In the company’s second major announcement in the last few days, following the adding of Star Wars Galaxies to the Station Pass subscription, representatives from Sony Online Entertainment have announced the formation of a new distribution label named Station Publishing. The new label will focus on distributing titles licensed from external companies, with the first game set to be Turbine Entertainment’s Asheron’ Call: Throne of Destiny and Asheron’s Call 2: Legions – a series previously published by Microsoft, and now again owned by the developer. "Station Publishing is dedicated to growing the overall Sony Online Entertainment product catalog with titles produced outside of our own studios," said president John Smedley. "This new label gives Sony Online Entertainment the ability to work with talented developers and publishers and to give them access to the high caliber retail and marketing resources that we have developed over the past six years. Turbine's Asheron's Call games are the perfect titles to be the first on this new label. The AC franchise has attracted hundreds of thousands of players to the online medium over the years, and SoE is very happy to be distributing these high quality products." It is not clear whether these and future third party titles will be absorbed into the Station Pass scheme, where a flat monthly fee gives access to all SoE titles, but it certainly now gives the company the widest range of massively multiplayer online (MMO) titles of any publisher.