EA Mounting Hostile Takeover of Take-Two

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Broken by GamePolitics

The Article wrote:
Entertainment software giant Electronic Arts announced today that it is seeking to merge with GTA publisher Take Two Interactive in what would be a two billion dollar deal.

But Take Two is playing hard-to-get.

An EA press release claims that it offered $26 per share for Take Two stock in a February 19th letter from EA CEO John Riccitiello (right) to T2 boss Strauss Zelnick (left). After Take Two management rejected EA's offer, Riccitiello decided to appeal directly to T2 shareholders. The $26 offering price represents a better than 60% premium over recent T2 share prices.

I'm frankly not surprised at this given Take-Two recent financial and management troubles and I can certainly see why EA wants to do this now as the company will become a lot more valuable after GTA4 ships. But man, I hope this doesn't happen. This massive industry consolidation is not good for gamers, not good for creative and really I don't think is good for anyone but the shareholders and executives of these companies. I like the direction EA's new management is going but with how corporate their games feel, I really don't want them getting their hands on GTA. The Take-Two stockholders have to approve this deal so it isn't a sure bet but with such a substantial premium being offered, I'd be surprised if Strauss Zelnick can convince them to hold off. The only thing I can think of is that they might want to hold out until GTA4 has made its money.

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GamePolitics has also now posted the full contents of a letter from John Riccitiello to Strauss Zelnick talking about their motives and in polite language basically saying, "EA wants what EA gets." It's long but an interesting read:

Johnny Boy wrote:
Dear Strauss:

Thank you for your letter of February 15, 2008. While I appreciate its courteous tone and value our ongoing dialogue, I am disappointed that you have rejected Electronic Arts Inc.'s ("EA's") $25 per share cash offer to acquire Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. ("Take-Two") and declined to engage in the friendly negotiations we proposed.

We continue to believe that an acquisition of Take-Two by EA is in the best interests of your shareholders, employees and other constituents, and we remain interested in acquiring Take-Two. So, to further demonstrate our seriousness and encourage you to move forward now, I am writing to increase EA's offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Take-Two to $26 per share in cash. This offer is subject to Take-Two agreeing by February 22, 2008 to commence negotiation of a definitive merger agreement and to permit EA to commence a limited due diligence review of Take-Two.

Our revised all-cash offer represents a 64% premium over Take-Two's most recent closing price and a 63% premium over Take-Two's 30-day trailing average price (based on prices as of market close on Friday, February 15th). We believe our offer represents a unique and compelling opportunity for Take-Two shareholders to maximize the value of their investment in the company, with materially lower risk than if Take-Two proceeds on a stand-alone basis.

We also believe that the transaction we are proposing represents a uniquely attractive opportunity for Take-Two's creative teams and key employees. EA is a diversified leader with well-established franchises and proven intellectual properties, global reach, and significant financial resources. I know we both agree that Take-Two's talented creative teams deserve a permanent home within a stable and growing publisher that provides these teams an environment to do what they do best - create great games. EA is organized in a four-label model that provides our creative teams the autonomy they need to fully realize their creative ambitions, while also providing a stable and supportive corporate and publishing infrastructure which allows them to best address the global marketplace. We have the resources to make the significant investments in technology and infrastructure needed for the most creative and innovative games in the industry. In short, a combination with EA would provide Take-Two's studios and employees a combination of the right resources for investment and global reach, and the right environment to do their best work.

We believe that Take-Two's shareholders would not be well-served by any further delay in negotiating and completing the proposed merger. While the videogame industry remains an attractive, high-growth business, the challenges and risks in the business are escalating, and the need for scale is becoming more pronounced. Despite steps taken since March 2007, Take-Two remains dependent on a limited number of titles, and has limited capital resources. In addition, Take-Two faces ongoing financial, legal and operating issues and a very intense competitive environment. Given these factors, we believe it will be increasingly difficult for Take-Two to create sustainable shareholder value and that Take-Two remains exposed to considerable risk of value loss.

We also believe that any delay in this proposed transaction works against the interest of Take-Two's shareholders, because:

– There can be no certainty that in the future EA or any other buyer would pay the same high premium we are offering today. We place significant value on the ability to close the transaction relatively quickly so that EA's strong publishing and distribution network, including our global packaged goods, online and wireless publishing organizations, can positively impact the catalogue sales of GTA IV and also the launch and sale of titles released later this year. We want to work with you and your team to complete the transaction in time to begin realizing its significant marketplace benefits in advance of this year's holiday selling season.

– We believe Take-Two's current share price already reflects investor expectations for a strong release of GTA IV as well as the longer-term issues that Take-Two faces. Once GTA IV ships, Take-Two will again be dependent on less-popular titles and face increasing challenges to compete with larger and better-capitalized competitors.

– With GTA IV shipping on April 29, development on this important title must now be essentially complete. We believe now is the right time to complete a transaction with minimal disruption for Take-Two.

We also believe the transaction we are proposing will create value for EA's shareholders. In addition to the top-line benefits noted above, we can achieve bottom-line benefits by combining Take-Two's and EA's corporate and publishing infrastructures and by optimally supporting Take-Two's creative teams and intellectual properties in EA's decentralized label structure.

Considerable thought, time and resources have been put forth in developing this offer, and our Board of Directors unanimously supports it. Our offer is not conditioned on any financing requirement. It is subject to the satisfactory completion of a due diligence review of Take-Two, the negotiation and execution of mutually acceptable definitive transaction agreements, and the satisfaction of customary conditions to be set forth in such agreements. We are prepared to move forward immediately with formal due diligence and the negotiation and execution of a definitive merger agreement and believe that with adequate access to the necessary information and people, we can complete both in approximately two weeks. We believe that our due diligence review can be completed with minimal disruption, requiring only limited access to a small number of senior executives of Take-Two and its legal, accounting and financial advisors. We also have prepared a draft merger agreement that we can forward to you immediately.

Our strong preference is to conduct a private negotiation. If you are unwilling to proceed on that basis, however, we may pursue other means, including the public disclosure of this letter, to bring our offer and the compelling value it represents to the attention of Take-Two's shareholders.

I am available to meet and discuss any and all aspects of this proposal with you and your Board. Again, we believe this proposal represents a unique opportunity to maximize value for Take-Two's shareholders, and that the combined enterprise would be extraordinarily well positioned to build value for our respective customers, employees, developers and other business partners. We hope that you and your Board share our enthusiasm, and we look forward to hearing back from you by February 22.

Sincerely,

John Riccitiello
Chief Executive Officer

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From a financial standpoint as a Take Two shareholder I am very happy. I bought some stock right before Bioshock shipped and was eagerly awaiting the release of GTA IV so I could probably sell it. This new turn will raise the value whether it goes through or not.

From a gamer standpoint I definitely have mixed feelings. EA has shown signs of improvement but in any free market economy competition is a good thing. I would not like to see the gaming industry end up with just Activision and EA as sole distributors.

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The only thing I don't like about this merger is that 2K has been releasing many of their games on Steam, and I don't want to buy them on EA Link.

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The only thing I don't like about this is that I like independent companies. Oh, and I'd like some competition in sports games, please. Is that too much to ask? If 2k is purchased then no more 2k Football, NBA2k, etc.

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It really was a question of who was going to take over TTWO, not when. You can't do it after GTA4 launches, because then the stock will be worth too much...and with Microsoft paying attention to Yahoo and to Epic, EA is going to take their shot.

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DSGamer wrote:
The only thing I don't like about this is that I like independent companies. Oh, and I'd like some competition in sports games, please. Is that too much to ask? If 2k is purchased then no more 2k Football, NBA2k, etc.

Yeah, this would be the equivalent of the day Sierra pulled the plug on Front Page Sports. I valued franchise would just cease to exist.

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Now that I think of it, wouldn't this deal put Irrational/2K Boston and the System Shock license back into the same family?

It's been an interesting few months in the industry.

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Take-Two Responds

And on a Sunday! They say the bid is too low (which I agree with but I'm no analyst) and that this is just an attempt by EA to grab them cheap before GTA4 comes out, makes a bazillion dollars and suddenly makes the company more expensive. They did say they are willing to open formal talks with EA after GTA4 ships which still concerns me but they have come out swinging and told the shareholders "No, don't drink EA's koolaid."

There's also a Q&A with John Riccitiello here.

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Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Take-Two Responds

And on a Sunday! They say the bid is too low (which I agree with but I'm no analyst) and that this is just an attempt by EA to grab them cheap before GTA4 comes out, makes a bazillion dollars and suddenly makes the company more expensive. They did say they are willing to open formal talks with EA after GTA4 ships which still concerns me but they have come out swinging and told the shareholders "No, don't drink EA's koolaid."

There's also a Q&A with John Riccitiello here.

And Take Two is right. Once GTA4 comes out and sells a bajillion copies, Take Two will be too expensive to buy. You can't blame them for trying to get them on the cheap.

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It's not a fialed attempt yet -- if enough of my fellow share holders are guillable enough EA could make a run on this. And, as has been pointed out, TTWO has had its share of monetary difficulty in the past year. I'm gonna wait before I make any final predictions.

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I can't wait to buy my next game made by EA/Rockstar Boston/Rockstar Australia.

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How scary is this. But is it foolish to think that something good could come out of this? heh

I admit, over the years of the exclusive NFL license and whining while I rent and play Madden every year, I often wondered what it would be like if the Visual Concepts/2K sports guys got to work with the Madden devs. In a perfect gaming world, I can only imagine one epic football game to end all others would come out of that combined dev team.

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Or I can EA ruining 2k and there's no competition. Believe me, if getting 2k to the masses required 2k being purchased and 2k football being rebranded as Madden, I'd have to think about it. But otherwise I don't like it.

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No way. Madden sells a bazillion copies every year. No matter how good anyone at EA might think 2K Football is, Madden continues as is, and 2K dies. Best case scenario, 2K does the Street games, and maybe gets to keep doing legends.

No one wants to be responsible for New Coke again.

And EA still will not support leagues and a web site.

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Of course that's what would happen. I was simply stating the only scenario under which I would like to see this purchase happen.

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Careful, It's Slimy

EA's quickly thrown together a web site with an open letter from John Riccitiello and a FAQ talking about why their takeover is a good thing. I don't feel any better after reading it, particularly with the very coy answers to some of the questions like the ones about 2K Sports and staff layoffs. It's basically a lot of "Don't worry, it'll be OK and if you're a shareholder, shut up and take your wicked huge premium." Still, worth a read if you're following this issue. Here's the open letter:

John Riccitiello wrote:
I'm pleased to announce that EA has made a proposal to acquire Take-Two. We've issued a press release that explains why the deal is attractive for the shareholders of both Take-Two and EA. Now I want to share some perspective on why it would be good for the people who make Take-Two's games and, just as important, the people who play them.

In a recent presentation, I told a group of developers that our industry is facing big challenges. Development costs are rising dramatically and games that aren't big hits struggle to reach profitability. Most independent studios don't have much margin for error. The result has been consolidation – large publishers are merging and independent developers are more amenable to being acquired. Unfortunately, our industry has a spotty record on integrating creative teams. We've all heard the stories about teams that got mismanaged in a merger – I know I've got a few.

I like to think that we learn from our experience. When I came back to EA last year, we introduced a new organization model that respects creative cultures and gives developers more freedom. We call it the "Label" model because it treats each of EA's four labels as a sovereign entity responsible for its own creative decisions and business results. We expect each team to operate on a profit plan and, in exchange, we provide investment, infrastructure and a lot of creative freedom.

Has it worked at EA? It's too early to say for sure, but the initial feedback is encouraging. Many of the people at Digital Illusions in Stockholm, Criterion in the UK, Mythic in Virginia, and more recently BioWare and Pandemic will tell you that so far, the experience at EA has been good. If you know people who work for these studios, I'd encourage you to talk to them. Ask them about our Label organization model. It's the model we hope to use with Take-Two.

Right now, Take-Two's future is uncertain. Take-Two's creative teams make fantastic games and the company has gotten some good interim support from a group of new corporate leaders. But Take-Two is facing a host of threats and – with or without combination with EA – we believe there is a strong likelihood that the company will be sold in the not-too-distant future.

We also believe that EA's proposal to acquire Take-Two is a good one for the people that make the games or are involved in leading these creative teams. We're offering stable management with an executive team that truly understands games. EA has a powerful publishing capability. We want to offer these and other advantages to Take-Two's creative teams and provide them an environment that shields these teams from unnecessary interference and allows them to keep making great games.

For people who buy and play games, know that we too are fans of Take-Two and Rockstar products and feel we can provide their creative teams with the support they deserve to continue to bring you more of their great games in the future.

So, that's it. We've made a proposal to buy Take-Two. Our preference is to make this a friendly transaction and I'm hopeful we can achieve that. We've sent this proposal in the genuine belief that combining EA and Take-Two would be good for the people who make games and good for the people who play them.

I sincerely hope we get a chance to prove it.

John Riccitiello

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They want protection money. That's how this "open letter" reads to me. I was with Mr. Riccitiello when he was speaking earlier about the need to keep companies under the EA banner separate "nation states" that could operate basically autonomously. But to use this as cover for a takeover makes me think he's just a shyster like the rest of the suits. I can see how this benefits shareholders to sell at some point. But who is he protecting 2k as a company from? Let me think... Who has the money to buy entire sports licenses and essentially put entire 2k products out of business? What company is breathing down their neck? What company is trying to launch a takeover bid right now? Oh, EA is.

So EA's message is essentially "join us, before you get taken over by... um... us".

The industry consolidation is sickening. This is almost enough to make me wish I hadn't purchased an EA product this year and almost enough to make me seriously reconsider any Rock Band DLC or any future games published by EA including Mass Effect 2/3. All they want is GTA IV while Rockstar is still cheap. They will jettison 2k Boston and 2k sports.

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Actually, right about now would be a good time for Microsoft to step in and make 2k a first party dev. They need good first party help. 2k could certainly provide it. God help me. I've found an "evil empire" bad enough to make me want 2k to fall lovingly into the embrace of Microsoft.

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Trainwreck wrote:
From a financial standpoint as a Take Two shareholder I am very happy. I bought some stock right before Bioshock shipped and was eagerly awaiting the release of GTA IV so I could probably sell it. This new turn will raise the value whether it goes through or not.

As I write this, TTWO stock has risen %52 percent (26.45) from Friday's close (17.36) so far. That is already above the latest EA bid offer. There is large volume of buyers, too. There has been talk for the past 2 years about possible offers for TTWO, but this is the first serious one. From the sound of the letter and the way EA is going about this bid, it seems Riccitello had been wanted to make some market and investor buzz with this $26 offer. Expect it to be higher, especially now that TTWO price is already above $26. The last time TTWO's stock price was that high was 2005 (credit Bill Harris). Cramps and Trainwreck, definitely hold on as the stock price keeps going up and the offer will definitely be bigger then $26 per share.

Take Two has been trying to hold on as a company amidst all of the management shakeups and legal issues (stock options accounting with their CEO, legal fallot of explicit GTA content, MLB license, etc.) until the cash cow that will be GTA IV is released. It's been a very fragile time for TTWO and as GTA IV has been delayed, it has become more fragile. EA was smart to jump when they did. I think the shareholders will be convinced by this offer. The board is too disjointed.

Once Take-Two goes, so will Infogrames (Atari) and Midway soon after. With THQ not too far down the line.

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And Ubisoft. If this trend continues, in 5 years there will literally only be 2 or 3 large publishers left. I think Atari and Midway will be left to fail and then their IPs will be bought up out of bankruptcy. Both of those companies are swimming in debt and losses and that's why no one has stepped up to buy them already, they don't want to assume all that debt. When the companies fail (and I think it's inevitable now), all the long-standing franchises they own will be cheap. That's what everyone did with Acclaim (though those IPs weren't nearly as valuable.)

Take-Two has still been losing money but they've been losing less and less each quarter thanks in no small part to the new management and BioShock was a bigger hit than even they expected which helped a lot. I think they were well on their way to not being in a position where they have to rely solely on GTA for profitability. One of the main reasons I want to see these guys stay independent is they take more creative risks than many other publishers. They make often sweeping changes to their sports titles every year and games like BioShock I don't believe would ever get greenlit under EA (remember, Ken Levine said Take-Two was the only company who would give his game a chance.) I don't think their creative elements will be happy or safe under EA and Riccitiello's completely non-committal answers on that issue don't dissuade any concerns.

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Two more Q&A's with John Riccitiello. I really just have to say to him: Dude, if you can't provide any real answers to the questions gamers have regarding layoffs, redundant IPs, studio closures and the fate of franchises, just refuse to answer the question altogether. Every time I read an answer on a serious question like this that addresses nothing while relying on language like "effectuate the synergies", I want to throw my Big Daddy figurine at his eye. In the second Q&A, there's a really hilarious bit from the EA CFO in which he says that EA would hold no monopoly over sports games if this went through, citing things like Hot Shots Golf and Wii Sports as the reasons. Yeah, cause those titles are so closely related to Madden. He also claims that EA doesn't control the content of the EA Sports games, the leagues do. I just about fell off my couch laughing.

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I agree with you that they will let Atari and Midway die to pick the pieces they want from the corpses like carrions. Get the big fish out of way now.

EA historically does not hold any debt. If they purchased an Atari or a Midway, the cost of the debt would be included in the bid offer, and due to the relative small size of both Atari and Midway would not be all that great.

EA puts GTA as the main prize, but hidden under their are the sports franchises and the final pieces of sport licenses they would need to essentialy monopolize the sports game genre. Micheal Pachter wrote a great viewpoint on this aspect. Cutting out the sports competition will allow EA to avoid any price wars and any purchases that may have gone 2K's way at the time. A true cash cow for the long term.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
One of the main reasons I want to see these guys stay independent is they take more creative risks than many other publishers. They make often sweeping changes to their sports titles every year and games like BioShock I don't believe would ever get greenlit under EA (remember, Ken Levine said Take-Two was the only company who would give his game a chance.)

Shareholders don't care about that. Gamers do and most gamers don't own stock in the companies they support or respect. I hear the development cultures are completely different.

When Ken Levine proposed the game, EA was different ownership and very much in the 'command and conquer' way of approaching IP and not this new 'LABEL' city-state model, which in concept looks good and seems to facilitate innovation and design, but still too early to say for sure if it is paying off or good integrate the company cultures of TTWO

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Get's slimier still for Take-Two

Quote:
According to an 8-K filing with the SEC, on February 14 (coincidentally the day before rejecting EA's first offer, which had been made on February 6) Take-Two proposed several changes to its management deal with ZelnickMedia, whose top execs run Take-Two.

They include:

–Boosting ZelnickMedia's monthly pay to $208,333 from $62,500 per month.

–Boosting the annual bonus to $2.5 million from $750,000.

–A grant of 600,000 shares of restricted stock that will vest over three years unless the company is acquired, in which case they'll vest immediately.

This is where it gets good, and I'm somewhat paraphrasing from the filings:

The shares won't vest immediately if, prior to the company's annual meeting, which is expected to be before April 1, the Company received a bona fide indication of interest in, or offer to enter into, a business combination (which it did); the offer specifies, with some degree of particularity, the material terms (which it may have) and (my favorite) the offer's existence hasn't been publicly disclosed or confirmed by either company before Take-Two's annual meeting. (Oops, definitely happened.)

That's right: Take-Two received a rich and serious offer from a substantial company. It didn't disclose the offer, and hoped to keep it secret until at least after the annual meeting, when investors might have challenged the compensation package and attempts by the company to block the deal. Then, in a public filing, Take-Two in effect threatened EA not to make the offer public by giving ZelnickMedia a chance to enrich itself, at the expense of shareholders, by granting restricted stock that will vest immediately if EA made the deal public.

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There is a thread about that over at GamePolitics and several are questioning the validity of the research made by that columnist, especially given his long-standing history as a Take-Two hater. That said, yeah it definitely looks suspicious. You'd think Strauss Zelnick wouldn't be stupid enough to try and pull something like this given he inherited Take-Two from a corrupt/inept board of directors.

Kolbo wrote:
Shareholders don't care about that. Gamers do and most gamers don't own stock in the companies they support or respect. I hear the development cultures are completely different.

You are right about that for sure. Make no mistake, I am writing this from the perspective of a games consumer. In my current mindset, I could care less about the stockholders, I care about what this means for my hobby. However, if I had the money to invest in the stock market, I also probably would have shares in some of these companies and if I was a holder of TTWO, I'd probably be dancing a jig right now. I get why selling this company is good for some people, it just isn't good for gamers.

Kolbo wrote:
When Ken Levine proposed the game, EA was different ownership and very much in the 'command and conquer' way of approaching IP and not this new 'LABEL' city-state model, which in concept looks good and seems to facilitate innovation and design, but still too early to say for sure if it is paying off or good integrate the company cultures of TTWO

EA's new "Label" system sounds like a good idea but as yet they've shown no evidence whatsoever that they are interested in taking risks with new IP. Yes, they have new IP coming but most of it just looks like derivatives of other well-established ideas. This may change and if so, I'm all for it. But if Ken Levine took the concept for an undeveloped BioShock to EA today, I'd be very surprised if they'd fund it.

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Parallax Abstraction wrote:
There is a thread about that over at GamePolitics and several are questioning the validity of the research made by that columnist, especially given his long-standing history as a Take-Two hater. That said, yeah it definitely looks suspicious.

I don't know what there is to dispute about his information. It's public.It's an SEC Filing.

Based on these moves by he and managemant of ZelnickMedia, it looks like they wanted to wait until GTA IV was released, reap those benefits and then get rid of the company. Now that EA has pretty much fubared that long-term plan, they are trying to recoup with these adsurb filings for compensation. All at the expense of the shareholders.

Quote:
Make no mistake, I am writing this from the perspective of a games consumer.

I want to look at it that way, too, but it all feels so fruitless when you are talking about what's best for gamers. All you can hope for is that the good ones break off and make their own independent studio. When money of this magnitude starts being thrown around, it's all about dollars and cents and less about what's best for the industry creatively.

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Yeah. This looks a lot like 2k sports should go solo or get spun off, form their own studio, something like that. Their are no winners here. Just business.

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DSGamer wrote:
Yeah. This looks a lot like 2k sports should go solo or get spun off, form their own studio, something like that. Their are no winners here. Just business.

EA will consolidate and just pick the talent they want from the 2k Sports franchises they compete against and dump the rest. Now that EA will not have to worry about 2k Sports releasing a sports game for $30 you can kiss holiday price reductions goodbye until the next years version comes out. Because of the monopoly on the sports genre they will be able to milk this cash cow until another studio trys to pump money into sports game or try to buyout one of the major sports licenses when (if) they become available again.

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ChrisLTD's picture
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There is nothing but awful vibes coming off of this potential deal.

The entire genre of sports video games would suddenly have just about zero competition.

Oh well, I should be playing less video games anyways

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Personally I'm just not too worried about this. EA has been a monolithic powerhouse for years now and yet good games come out every single year, sometimes even from within or published by EA. Activision was freaking huge even before the Blizzard merger and yet Call of Duty 4 was and is an awesome game. Sure, both companies have made huge missteps historically and killed studios I loved, but even when that happens the people who make up those studios just go and form new development studios and kick out awesome games. While consolidation is certainly something to be wary of I don't think it will ruin gaming like some people on this thread seem to fear; hell, I don't even think this deal would ruin the GTA franchise. The sky is not falling here, it's just a storm that comes through town occasionally.

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