A quick news post today to let everyone know (I was a little slow to find out) that EA has made a bid to purchase TakeTwo, owners of Rockstar Games and makers of the Grand Theft Auto series. TakeTwo has refused the bid, but the folks at EA apparently aren't backing down; they have published this open letter to TakeTwo and the rest of the gaming public. Thanks to Screen Play (an Australian game news blog that I read) for covering the story.
As a huge fan of the GTA series, I don't quite know what to make of this. Certainly the series will continue regardless of what happens with these two companies, but I hope GTA IV won't be delayed too much because of it.
The similarities between EA's offer and Microsoft's rebuffed offer to buy Yahoo are pretty obvious here. All we need is EA's chief rival to come out publicly condemning the acquisition as hazardous to gaming public's right to virtual entertainment. Get on it, Vivendi.
Monday, February 25, 2008
EA and TakeTwo
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Take-Two's stock jumped by ~50% after EA's bid. It was around $17 on Friday, and it's at around $27 today. I believe EA's offer was at around $26 per share, so I don't know what would make EA's offer so attractive other than from a long-term perspective, since TTWO seems to be losing money. Not sure when GTA's coming out, but in their next earnings announcement next month TTWO is expected to announce a profit.
ReplyDeleteTake-Two also owns 2K sports, so I guess this is something like killing 2 birds with one stone(get GTA, kill off sports rival)?
Dew