Take-Two Acquires Firaxis

eToyChest reports that Publisher Take-Two has acquired Firaxis studios, developers of the Civilization franchise. From the article: "At this point I'm not sure what to think. If Take-Two takes a hands-off approach, and lets Firaxis do their thing, then I'm all for this. I just don't want this to become a matter of "too many cooks in the kitchen", and somehow negatively impact future titles that spring from Sid Meier's genius. Your thoughts?"

This is crap

[ZephyrXero]

I don't think it's very good. If Take-two wants to regularly invest (and thus) profit off the games Firaxis makes, then that's fine. If they want to sign an agreement for them to do a certain number of games this way...that's fine. But, there's no reason for all these publishers to keep gobbling up all the developers. We're gonna get to a point where there are very few companies that autonomously create games, and thus less innovation I'm afraid.

Re:This is crap

[Serapth]

We there is a reason... survival. When you have a big predator gobbling up every successful independant developer available, if your a rival, you have to act to protect your prize divisions. EA, through their actions, are basically forcing Take2 and Ubi to follow suit to a certain degree. This is also why Pandemic + Bioware merged together with an investment firm. About the only way they could stay independant and successful.

Re:One word: MicroProse

[d3kk]

... Or they'll understand that games like Civilization are quite successful for a reason and they won't mess with it. Not all publishers exist solely to ruin video games and everything you've ever loved.

Personal Experience with 2K Acquistions

[DCookie]

I develop sports games for a company owned by Take Two under the 2K Sports label. I have worked here before, during, and after the aquisition. I will be the first to say that the acquisition has been nothing but positive for our company. Take Two has not pushed us to do anything we wouldn't have done otherwise and has only provided us with larger pockets from which to draw resources.

I am confident that the acquisition will not negatively impact Firaxis' great line of games.

Gah

[obeythefist]

For people who've been watching the Civ IV release with interest (anyone who paid money for it probably is), this is clearly another bad thing.

For people who don't know, Civ IV, while mechanically a great game, was rushed out of the door unfinished. I would suggest that the *majority* of people who bought it had technical difficulties with the game, from rendering, XML, ATI initialisation, crash to desktop, restarts, bluescreens and all manner of other problems (just take a look at the forums at Civfanatics to see).

The reason for this is, presumably, that Take 2 forced Firaxis to release the game in an unfinished state.

Take 2 aren't offering any support for the product apart from rumours that a support person once said there may be a patch released. They're not answering emails and the telephone support is quite bad as the call center staff don't have much information.

Take 2 directly owning Firaxis now means that this kind of shoddiness is now something we should expect in future.