Take-Two acquisition by EA imminent
As everyone expected, the merger between Vivendi Games and Activision that led to the birth of Activision-Blizzard, the new no.1 video game publisher in the world, didn’t sit too well with, now second biggest publisher, EA Games. So they’re thinking of solutions to get back in the top spot, and acquiring Take-Two Interactive seems to be their best bet.
As much as I hate to see juggernauts like EA taking over ambitious, independent developers and publishers, this is the world we live in, no matter how good you are, if you don’t have the financial means to compete you eventually have to accept the compromise of an acquisition. According to many this is the fate of Take-Two, creator and publisher of titles like: GTA, BioShock, Civilization, Manhunt, Midnight Club and many more. Mike Hackey, analyst for Janco Partners, spoke with GameDaily and said that having so many popular titles, many created in-house, is in fact what makes the company such an attractive target for the evil EA empire: “The company owns a large stable of owned and internally developed IP franchises. The recent acquisition of Activision by Vivendi and Bioware Pandemic by Electronic Arts, are clear examples of owned IP value recognition, in our opinion.”
Take-Two’s financial results for 2007 aren’t at all impressive, with $7.1 million losses in their last quarter and $138.4 million for the whole year. Even though it did better than last year, still, things are far from being perfect. But this is of less importance for EA, with all the hot titles Take-Two owns, they can get the ship floating again. Not even the repeated statements of Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, saying the company is not for sale, don’t seem to be able to stop EA.
According to Mike Hackey, Take-Two is worth well over a billion dollars, but considering they paid $855 for Bioware-Pandemic, money’s no issue for EA Games.
I for one hope that through some miracle Take-Two keeps its independence, cause frankly it’s just them, Eidos and Ubisoft now, I don’t even want to think of what would happen if they were gone too, we all know of what questionable quality EA games can be…
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They paid $855 for Bioware-Pandemic? Shocking! What will EA stop at?
Sorry, couldn’t help myself, I do know what it’s meant to say.
Comment by Jono | December 21, 2007
Bye bye the impressive Civ series…
Comment by Matt | December 21, 2007
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! All the great 2K Sports titles would be gone forever. Only EA Sports games would be a nightmare…
Comment by K.W. | December 21, 2007
Eidos, Take-Two, and Ubisoft need to combine
Comment by jack | December 21, 2007
@K.W.: 2K Sports would go away, but the devs from those franchises would probably be added to the existing teams for the different EA Sports games. And games like Top Spin and MLB would probably live on under a different name. I don’t want to see it happen, but giving some of these titles bigger budgets could result in better games (albeit with more in-game advertising…).
Comment by Lawrence | December 22, 2007
I have a feeling EA is going to get so big and fat in it’s corporate structure that it just implodes on itself, ends up selling or breaking up into a ton of separate gaming communities, and then.. and only then will there be some truly amazing games coming out of that whole bunch. They’ve got the talent, but I think it’s getting a little too “corpratized”.
I’ve just added you to my blogroll.. you’ve got a clean site.
Comment by Gamer | December 22, 2007
The game “Black” is the single best war game I have ever played with one exception!Not being able to save checkpoints!I walked through the first levels of this game with no problem,but granted,the final level of this game is tough!When you have to start a level over from the beginning if you have to turn your system off,for what ever reason,is kind of wrong!Most games I have ever played will let you save your checkpoints!Not this one!Don’t get me wrong,I do not regret buying this game,I bought my brother a copy for Christmas,but you should be able to save checkpoints and start from there when you turn your system back on!I give this game a 9!Would be an 10 if you could save checkpoints!Great Game other than that.Can’t wait to play the next one!
Comment by junebuug | January 11, 2008