EA Launches 'Hostile' Bid for GTA Publisher

Games news sites are reporting that EA has issued a new offering to Take-Two's shareholders in an attempt to purchase the company outright. Last month EA offered some $2 billion to Take-Two in an effort to accomplish the same goal. Take-Two declined, and EA took their offer public. Now, Electronic Arts is offering the price of some $26 per share to Take-Two's holders, a generous valuation. "Within ten business days Take-Two is required by law to publish, send or give to shareholders (and file with the Securities and Exchange Commission), a statement as to whether it recommends acceptance or rejection of the latest offer ... Since EA launched its February bid Take-Two said that other parties had approached it regarding a merger, but that it hadn't entered into negotiations with other companies about a deal."

Very Generous

[eldavojohn]

At first I though, hey, their stock is at $25.54, $26 a share is not so generous. Then I went on to see that before the $2 billion bid it was bouncing between $16 & $18 [google.com] for months. In fact, it hadn't seen $26/share since 1999. I can only assume the $2 billion bid was what caused it to spike, nothing else indicates that.

So the reason it's so generous is because EA is paying their own price that was the result of them inflating Take Two's stock prices. They want this company. Badly. Desperation or good business move? I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the big dog gobbling up the competition or EA expanding to other types of games and gamers? In my eyes, it's a shame for the sake of diversity though. EA would never take the risks Take Two has.

Re:Very Generous

[forsey]

Manhunt 2 is a far more violent game than GTA and it's on the Wii. Nintendo, like Sony and MS, only refuse games rated AO.

Re:Very Generous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm wondering what chart you're looking at. The Chart you lined peaks at $10.87 in 1999. It was over $28 in 2005.

You're completely correct, I mistakenly looked at the dates as the bar slid over and misread them to be labeling the graph above instead of the graph below. Please replace 1999 with 2005 in my original post.

Re:Very Generous

[Itchyeyes]

IMO, this is a bad move for EA. GTA has been a good franchise, but it is all TT has.

It's the biggest franchise they have but it's not even close to "all they have". Just to name a few they have Bioshock, Civilization, and all of the 2K Sports franchises.

Re:Very Generous

[quantumplacet]

While GTA is certainly Take Two's biggest franchise, its far from their only valuable property. Rockstar has also developed both Manhunt games, Midnight Club and Bully, all of which were quite successful. Take Two also owns 2K, which includes 2K sports, EA's only real remaining competitor in the sports gaming market. Gathering, TalonSoft and Jack of All Games are also under the Take Two umbrella and all have had their successes. Not to say GTA isn't EA's primary interest in the takeover, but obviously the single franchise isn't worth $2B.

Re:Very Generous

[sapphire wyvern]

GTA has been a good franchise, but it is all TT has.

Hardly. You may or may not be aware that Take Two owns 2k Games and 2k Sports. Thus, all of the following have been published by Take Two. Any of it familiar?

• Bioshock
• Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion
• Civilization IV

In fact, not only were Civ IV and Bioshock published by Take Two, they were developed by studios that are currently owned by Take Two (Firaxis and the creatively-named 2K Boston/2K Australia, formerly Irrational Games).

Re:I'm no big fan of Take-Two

[Gman14msu]

Well actually Sim City 4 was, and still is, a solid effort from them. They expanded the ability to users to modify aspects of the game and there is still an active community creating user content 5 years after it came out. Many people complained that the game was becoming too complicated and thus didn't garner widespread success. But seriously to summarize the Sim City franchise and not include Sim City 4 does not do the game justice.

Now don't get me wrong, I think EA has done a lot of bad to the gaming industry. Their exclusive contracts with the NFL and NCAA for football (which forced 2k Sports to go exclusive with the MLB), have in my eyes, ruined the sports game industry. Not to mention the worthless Sim City societies that EA recently put out, that wasn't even developed by Maxis.

Seriously though, if you want to> see a great game in development, one that will become the new Sim City, check out Cities Unlimited, http://cuplanet.com/ [cuplanet.com]. Monte Cristo is taking in a lot of public input on their forums for the new game and by all accounts it looks like the new Sim City that people have been waiting for.

Re:EA Takeovers aren't as bad as you'd think.

[Grimbleton]

You realize of course that EA has owned Origin Systems since 1992, and has been running Ultima Online since 1997, right? ...right?

EA is the grandfather of the MMO.

Re:Very Generous

[eldavojohn]

You're right about EA wanting a piece of the next release but I don't think it has to do with GTA, it has to do with the upcoming BioShock 2 [portalit.net].

Re:I'm no big fan of Take-Two

[Lemming42]

And don't even get started on 'The Sims'. Even if I thought it was a good concept (which it might be -- but it's no Sim City, IMHO) WTF is up with twenty thousand different "expansion" packs? They neglected a great franchise (Sim City) in favor of using the brand name to push a crappy product that they sold in 30 different parts.

The Sims is the far and away the best-selling PC game franchise in history. Every year since "The Sims" was released in 2000, a Sims product (sometimes more than one!) has held a top 5 spot in PC sales, and according to Wikipedia it's sold more than 70 million units as of January 2007.

Now I'm not saying it's the best game in world, but it's certainly a success.