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."

If this goes through..

[kvezach]

Cue GTA 2009. .. and GTA 2010, GTA 2011, GTA 2012, GTA 2013...

Re:

[FredFredrickson]

Due to the fact that those games are already hot sellers, I'd say they were already pretty much guaranteed up through GTA 2013.

Re:

[sortius_nod]

makes me scared... will have the "EA Touch(TM)" just like everything they buy *shudders*.

Re:If this goes through..

[Joe The Dragon]

and games will be buggy as the coders will be working 80+ weeks.

Re:

[fatgraham]

You don't think the coders who currently write the GTA games work 80+ hours a week??

Re:

[Joe The Dragon]

But they don't have to deal with the other EA carp and at EA they will just be moved to next game with no brake time.

Re:

[Moonpie Madness]

years ago?

Are you serious? Go buy an EA game and compare it to somethign you can buy from Valve or Insomniac or Naughty Dog or Polyphony or Nintendo.

EA occasionally comes out with something special, but generally it's repetitive and it's low quality and it's buggy. It's a well deserved reputation, not an isolated problem of yesteryear.

EA = minimal effort enterprise company. They will only put in as much effort as they absolutely have to to get sales before the next iteration. Game making is not an artfo

Re:

[darthflo]

INSANE? This! is! SPA^H^H^HEA!

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Cue GTA 2009. .. and GTA 2010, GTA 2011, GTA 2012, GTA 2013...

Yeah, except with EA in control, don't expect the same GTA edginess. More accurately - queue the nerfing of Rockstar Games. :(

Re:

[utopianfiat]

Are you sure? I'd be interested to see what EA's decision is- considering their current titles I'd expect it wouldn't be very good, but if you consider that they're paying for the liability associated with Rockstar's past and current titles (including but not limited to GTA 1, 2, 3, VC, SA, State of Emergency, Red Dead Revolver, Bully [currently proceeding], etc); Wouldn't you assume that if they're taking on Rockstar's past liability that they might, in fact, be planning to provide a legal umbrella to Rock

Re:

[HAKdragon]

Except Microsoft didn't fire a bunch of the people from Rare, they left. (A good number of them formed Free Radical.) Also, I wouldn't exactly call the people at Bungie talentless, especially the people who were behind the (now free) Marathon series.

Re:If this goes through..

[Anonymous Coward]

Each with identical gameplay, but updated stats on all your favorite drug dealers and prostitutes.

Re:If this goes through..

[mikael]

The next title of the game has already been developed, and it is about to be released, with guaranteed profits. It is no surprise that EA sees a quick way to boost their quarterly earnings reports.

Re:

[aztektum]

Exactly. If I were an EA shareholder, I'd be pissed. As another poster pointed out, the amount EA is offering is really over stating what GTA specifically is worth. Don't piss away a crap ton for a short term boost. Although I guess that is the American way.

Remember when it use to be about family, apple pie, and fireworks and shit? Now it's all about the Benjamins.

Re:

[superpulpsicle]

If EA was really generous they would not be doing this when the stockmarket is in the hell hole. They are obviously taking advantage of the economic situations. Here's a new EA slogan.

EA ---- play the market, not video games.

This is bad for consumers. They should be shutdown. I piss on anyone who spent any money buying their monopolistic football games.

Re:

[somersault]

Remember when it use to be about family, apple pie, and fireworks and shit? Now it's all about the Benjamins.

My rose tinted spectacles must be broken - I can't quite see this time when humanity wasn't all about the money..?

Re:

[darthflo]

I guess sometime around here [imdb.com]. :)

Re:

[rifter]

Remember when it use to be about family, apple pie, and fireworks and shit? Now it's all about the Benjamins.

Nah you got it wrong, Bro ... it's about gettin the paper NOW, instead of waitin around to *get paid*. :D

Re:

[mikael]

There might be other factors involved. Rockstar Games has produced several titles which have caused controversy in the past and given the game industry bad press (Bully [wikipedia.org] and Hot Coffee lawsuit [gamesarefun.com].

Having a controlling interest over Rockstar might prevent such events happening in the future.

Re:

[everynerd]

And more to this, each successive year will in fact be a new "episode" to the last with no improvements to the game, nor any bug fixes. Also, EA will not fucking fix the [problem] you have reported to [support].

I'm no big fan of Take-Two

[Pichu0102]

But still, I hope that EA doesn't take hold of them. EA's gaining way too much influence on gaming, and considering how they run things into the ground and churn out mediocre games on the backs of good games makes me worried that they'll grab as many companies as they can, and run them and their brands right into the ground.

Obligatory Penny Arcade. Different company, but I still feel it applies here.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/12/05 [penny-arcade.com]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:

[badboy_tw2002]

"FWIW I feel the same way about Civilization -- I still think the best one was Civ2, though at least with that franchise they never sold out to the likes of EA and the new titles are actually playable and well made."

LOL! I thought this was true too, but then I looked it up and Firaxis (maker of recent Civ stuff) is owned by none other than Take2 :) So if this deal goes through it will be under EA as well. And it looks like Sid won't care:

http://bigblog.com/computer_games/sid-meier-gives-nod-to-ea-tak [bigblog.com]

Re:

[kellyb9]

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.

Madden was... and still, one of the best sports franchises around. I thought 2k couldn't hold a candle to Madden. Although, I'm all in for a competition. This is one area where I think they are doing suprisingly well.

Re:

[notque]

Completely opinion based. I think Madden isn't half the game 2k is.

Re:

[kellyb9]

May be opinion based, but when they were both freely available, Madden kicked the shit out of 2k.

Re:

[petermgreen]

The problem I had with sim city 4 was that at least in my experiance it slowed down like hell once your city got over a certain size with things like the traffic analysis taking ages to update.

OTOH my newest gaming capable (read: has a dedicated graphics card) machine is just over 3 years old now (though the graphics card is newer, the machine wasn't initially bought for gaming) and was pretty low spec at the time so this may not be such an issue on modern hardware.

Re:

[whisper_jeff]

Why'd ya have to sell out Will?

I believe the technical answer is "truck loads of cash."

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.

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

[zippthorne]

I'm not sure that's all that good of a metric. A 'Sims' product may have been on the shelves, and if you aggregate them it's the best selling, but a starcraft product has been on the shelves since 1998. And it's the same product. In glorious 800x600 sprite graphics!

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

[AstrumPreliator]

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

Well that's what EA does. They're not in this industry to make great games and have a loyal fan base*, they're in it to make truck loads of cash in any way they can. This usually boils down to buying companies who have a loyal fan base and game names with good reputation, then driving them into the ground. I'm not saying EA is incapable of making good or original games, just that this is what they tend to do.

*I realize all companies are in it to make money. A lot of them consider good products and a loyal following to be a good move financially.

Re:

[badboy_tw2002]

So selling 70 million units of the same franchise via all the expansion packs is not a loyal fanbase? How was the Sims driven into the ground?

Re:

[Moonpie Madness]

He's probably referring to the fact that the Sims sucks, objectively and obviously. It caters to the lowest common denominator as opposed to the true creativity and value of the other Sim games of Maxis.

The Sims made a ton of money. So what? EA is an enterprise company totally devoted to profit and not really interested in the craft of gamemaking. The repeated responses to this criticism pointing out that the game made a lot of money is really, really stupid. no kidding it made money. It made money by

Re:

[badboy_tw2002]

No, he was specifically saying they take games with loyal fan bases and drive them into the ground, thus destroying the fan base. A game that sells 70 million units has a loyal fan base, esp. one that depends on repeat customers through expansion packs. Whether or not its your cup of tea is irrelavent to the fact that people actually like it and are fans of the franchise. And saying that they made those sales off the name of SimCity is rediculous - the demographics of who is playing is completely differe

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Durzel]

"The Sims" is a licence to print money as far as EA is concerned, it really is as simple as that.

You can't exactly blame them for milking the cash cow when it has such a huge following.

Women and Sims

[QuoteMstr]

Oddly enough, I've noticed that while my female friends couldn't care less about most games, they go absolutely crazy over The Sims. Perhaps this effect has something to do with that game's popularity.

Re:

[InfinityWpi]

Why'd ya have to sell out Will?

Sold out? Yeah, Will sold out. He sold out Best Buy, he sold out Gamestop, he sold out WalMart, he sold out Circuit City... The reason EA focuses more on The Sims than SimCity is that IT MAKES THEM MORE MONEY. Convince ten to twenty million people to buy Sim City 5 when it comes out and maybe they'll start paying it more attention.

Re:

[Backward Z]

This is a great example of a point I want to make...

EA makes crap games sometimes, especially when they buy a license they then want to milk. For example, from The Sims comes all the expansion packs, but also The Urbz and The Sims Online... Bunch of crap.

What nobody's giving EA credit for, however, is they do actually own up to their mistakes and work to improve on them.

Disclosure: I worked at EA Redwood Shores for 6 months in a creative position on a major title about a year ago now and the experience wa

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Backward Z]

Sounds like you've basically summarized a lot of the reasons why they do suck ;)

Totally.

Very simply, EA overworks their staff. They take advantage of passionate, talented indviduals who want their work to shine and have every ability to do just that... if they had more time.

In the same breath, I don't think it's wise to just say, "EA sucks" and dismiss them. I replied to your post in particular, but in my head I'm replying to a bunch of anti-EA sentiments I find all over /., Kotaku, EvilAvatar...

Maybe my point is: EA sucks, but not for the reasons most people cite.

And they're in po

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, there's plenty of EA related penny arcade material:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/11/15 [penny-arcade.com]

Re:

[sesshomaru]

My favorite:

Cut Yourself [penny-arcade.com]

EA Crap coding

[phorm]

Indeed. Every time I think of EA's acquisitions, I think about my more recent experience with C&C 3. I actually bought about 3-6 months after the release, so there were already patches, but still tons of bugs. Netplay was particularly horrible.

Forward to today, EA is touting the release of the addon to C&C3, but many bugs still exist in the game. I think the worst part is their online service, which seem to tie in all users regardless of location, which in many case pretty much guarantees a game with lag and dropouts. They've certainly got little on competitors like Blizzard, which - despite various other complaints about battle.net - generally has a reliable online experience, and has separate servers for the various world-regions.

EA is a bubblegum gaming company, and they turn all the companies they buy into such with little regard to quality or customer satisfaction.

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:

[Yvanhoe]

Isn't that a regular maneuver when buying a company ? Anticipating a rise due to the huge ask volume of a buyout is common I think.

Re:Very Generous

[EastCoastSurfer]

EA offered to buy them a couple weeks ago. Take Two refused. So now EA is pissed and wants in before the next release of GTA. IMO, this is a bad move for EA. GTA has been a good franchise, but it is all TT has. Plus, how many times can you rehash the same thing (whoops that's what EA is famous for lol). I'm not so sure I would value GTA in it's current state at 2B. The GTA franchise has sold 66M game to date. At $50/each that's 3.3B over the life of the franchise. You have to assume the franchise will continue to grow for a 2B price tag. Speaking of growth, will Nintendo even let a game like GTA on the wii?

Re:

[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

[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

[shlepp]

I have a feeling this whole buying thing has to do with 2k sports, EA's only rival in the sports games.

Re:

[Itchyeyes]

For what it's worth, an EA buyout of T2 would reunite Firaxis with the rights to Alpha Centauri.

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

[NeutronCowboy]

Personally, I think EA has two reasons to acquire Take Two: Remove 2k Sports as competitor, and get GTA in the process. 2K Sports was a major thorn in EA's side, as it forced EA to reduce the price of its sports game to 19.99 for a little while. That's $40 per game in lost revenue. Not all games would have sold, but I can guarantee you that this was a serious hit to EA's bottom line. I'd even argue that this deal, contrary to the one that paid nearly $1B for Bioware and Pandemic, will have a positive ROI within a few years, based on nothing but GTA profits and lack of competition from 2K Sports.

Re:

[CodeBuster]

2K Sports was a major thorn in EA's side, as it forced EA to reduce the price of its sports game to 19.99 for a little while.

Hmmm, I remember reading that EA had won the rights to all of the NFL sports teams, player names, logos, and other trademarks and that they had paid other leagues for the same privileges by outbidding their competitors (i.e. 2K) for the same naming rights in baseball, hockey, and just about every other professional sports league of consequence. Now, would you rather play Madden 200x from EA with Madden voice overs, the real NFL team names, player names and statistics, venues, jerseys, etc OR would you rath

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:

[Itchyeyes]

Oblivion was merely published by T2, it was developed by Bethesda which retains the rights to the IP. Bethesda is a subsidiary of Zenimax Media. Thus, TES would not be a factor in the EA acquisition of T2.

Re:

[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:

[Mongoose Disciple]

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.

Nah, I don't think so. Bioshock was great and all, but I'd surprised if it sold anywhere near the volume of, say, GTA 3 across all platforms.

(I could be wrong.)

Re:

[Edgewize]

Bioshock sold around 2 million units. GTA: San Andreas sold over 20 million units. It's not even close.

Re:

[Tritoch]

Don't forget about Globalstar/2K Play. Carnival Games was a huge success on Wii (now coming to DS), and they have a number of properties like Dora the Explorer that are cheap to develop and sell well to the casual crowd. Games like that don't give TT any cred with hardcore gamers, but they're cheap and easy ways to make a lot of money. They should also integrate well with EA's own casual initiatives, which have only gained steam recently with EA's rebranding efforts and focus on the Wii and DS.

Re:

[Rhone]

Speaking of growth, will Nintendo even let a game like GTA on the wii?

I'd say the existence Scarface, The Godfather (GTA-like games, one of which goes overboard with verbal profanity), and Manhunt 2 (also by Rockstar--and far more disturbingly violent than any GTA) on the Wii make the answer to your question obvious.

The question, then, is simply whether Rockstar wants to make a GTA game for the Wii, and the answer is apparently "no".

Re:

[killbill!]

will Nintendo even let a game like GTA on the wii?

The Godfather: Blackhand Edition? Made by EA by the way... and arguably one of the most fun games on the Wii.

Re:

[Edgewize]

Maybe the stock would go higher, but maybe not. The rest of their finances are a disaster. The investment firms and stock analysts surely know how much of a hit GTA IV will be. You could argue (and EA has said) that this is why the stock was at 16 instead of 10 or 5; the value of future GTA earnings is already factored into the market price.

Re:Very Generous

[ivan256]

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.

Take Two was really undervalued because on one round of poor selling titles, and various lawsuits. EA realized this. It would be irresponsible for them to bid more than they thought the company was worth. This offer is the same as the previous one. $26/share == $2billion.

The analysts (who may be full of crap, of course) all seem to be saying that they expect it to take $29 - $31/share to get a deal done. Will EA pony up another $500mil? If you ask me, people who like video games should hope not.

Re:

[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:

[Austerity Empowers]

I'm not sure about that. Creative people don't need EA to make great games, they just need money...wherever it comes from. Once you've brought your creation as far as it can go, and it becomes a "release a new version every year before christmas"...it's really time to move on anyway. It's just hard to walk away from a paycheck. EA buying out TT, and then the inevitable fallout of people smart enough to know they can do better, might actually improve things for gamers.

Re:

[petermgreen]

I just wish they would do a better job of making sequals after the original developer quits.

Take spyro for example, not really my sort of game but my brother loved the three titles by the original developers.

Then insomniac games moved on (to create ratchet and clank, another great series at least for the first three games I haven't played gladiator, size matters and tolls of destruction yet) and whoevever owned the rights to the series got some other developers to create "enter the dragonfly". This games fe

Re:

[Marcosll]

Yeah, if EA buys out Take Two it will really be the beginning of the end for that franchise. Although, to be quite honest, them removing planes already was a huge step back. I don't think the game will be delayed because it's pretty much ready though. Estepona Apartments [palmestates.net]

Jacked

[JavaLord]

Sounds like take 2 is gonna get JACKED.

doesn't ea have enough publishers?

[OrochimaruVoldemort]

they own bioware and pandemic. now they want take-two? this is becoming a monopoly on game publishing. the only real competitor is activision, and they are flailing right now.

That's gotta hurt!

[SoundGuyNoise]

I'd love to hear John Madden do color commentary over GTA.

Re:That's gotta hurt!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'h-I'h-If he steals that car.... it's a felony.

Oh boy!

[acehole]

I just can't wait for GTA: Livin' Large, GTA: Hot Date, GTA: Makin Magic and GTA: Vacation.

Re:Oh boy!

[poetmatt]

What about GTA: Hot Coffee?

Oh wait.....

Re:

[stiggle]

What about games for girls?

Grand Theft Pony & Grand Theft Barbie.

Got to mix and match those licenses and franchise.

cue the jokes

[Speare]

I'm expecting plenty of jokes about EA paying the fee, taking Take Two for a "ride," robbing Take Two of all its money and professional services, then firing a cap into the business before driving off.

Re:

[esocid]

I think they would be more along the lines of:

1. EA picking up TT, pulling into a secluded area (cue squeaking suspension).
2. Run them over for all the money they just paid TT.
3. Profit!!

Take Two Responds

[JeanBaptiste]

R1, R2, L1, R2, Left, Down, Right, Up, Left, Down, Right, Up, GTFO.

Surrender.

[SpaceDreamer]

You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.

An oldie but goodie

[sesshomaru]

I loved this comment from a while back when they were trying to by Ubisoft:

What's going on indeed... [slashdot.org]

Monopoly

[gpalyu]

If this was to go through, it would pretty much mean the end of major sports games competition, eh?

Fuck EA

[jollyreaper]

There are two games I want to see: a new Wing Commander and a modern update of Syndicate. Neither will get made.

As far as Wing Commander goes, to hell with the FMV. Sure, if you want to do video scenes, animate the 3D models but no more live action! The gameplay went to crap with live action. I want quality along the lines of Wing Commander 1 and 2. The flight models in those games were based more on WWI than the way Star Wars did it, cribbing from WWII. I don't care, it looked gorgeous and was a frickin' b

Re:

[Buelldozer]

Oh yeah?

Someday I am going to find the person responsible for the death of "Darklands" and I am going to kick them in the balls. Hard. Repeatedly. For a long time.

Re:

[jollyreaper]

Hmm, I'd skipped it because 1) my computer couldn't run it and 2) I heard it was a disappointment, much in the same way X-Com 2 was a disappointment compared to the original.

The Syndicate expansion, American Revolt, that was just evil. It's the video game equivalent of End of Evangelion. I have no idea what the fans did to piss those devs off!

Re:

[dave562]

I remember American Revolt. I remember lots and lots of rocket launchers, but that's about it...

And air strikes, and I think it might have satellite bombardment too. American Revolt was brutal, it required a real mastery of the game. Syndicate Wars was too good, but not quite the original. They focused more on the story which was a nice twist, but it felt like you lost some of the free form, do whatever you want control that the original had.

EA's motivation

[iamghetto]

EA's main motivation for this acquisition is to regain the old price point for their flag ship sports titles. Take-Two publishes basketball, basebeall & hockey games (and to a lesser degree football) games that are direct competitors to EA's flagship sport titles. However, Take-Two at times has priced these titles as low as $29.99 which causes EA to drive it's own prices down.

Therefore, buying Take-Two would rid EA of there sports-related competition and all them to price their games at whatever they want. EA is one record saying that this is their intention, and that GTA is just icing on the cake.

Kids

[BigJClark]

Don't hate on EA for making decisions that increase the total value of its own company. Instead, pity the poor game programmers. Kids, I have friends who work for that disaster of a company, and I had my own chance at it. The office in Vancouver is decked out to the 9's, but you'd better be ready to sacrifice your soul to the devil. Don't even bother applying if you have a family.

Seriously, think of the programmers.

..and the AI guys, although, they don't really do any work :)

Electronic Arts

[Schmapdi]

EA - Actively trying to ruin your favorite hobby for a good 20 years now. I mean really - are they not going to be happy until they own every game developer in existence and can charge 60 bucks a year for an incremental update to every franchise and brand under the sun?

Nice timing

[ecavalli]

The offer is a clever move by EA, and if this particular offer isn't accepted, another one like it will be very soon.

As a company, Take Two is simply falling apart. They're being sued by shareholders [next-gen.biz] for not accepting EA's original $2 billion buy out offer, the company is constantly under attack by politicans, parent's groups and religious leaders and aside from the temporary stock price hike attributed to EA's lust for the firm, the company's shareholders are jumping ship and dumping stock [next-gen.biz] faster than you can say "GTA made me do it."

EA has foreseen the collapse of the Take Two and has decided it wants to salvage Grand Theft Auto -- not for any altruistic reason, but for the hundreds of millions of dollars each new game automatically earns. They may not be able to create an original football game, but EA certainly has the cash and the legal know-how to absorb Take Two.

Prediction: EA will own the firm by the release of GTA4.

Re:

[PC and Sony Fanboy]

Prediction: EA will own the firm by the release of GTA4.

My Prediction: EA will NOT own the firm by the release of GTA4.

well... one of us will win ;)

EA: The MS of games.

[Vexorian]

1. Acknowledge you can't innovate.
2. Buy company that innovates.
3. Charge a heck load of money for prior innovation.
4. Company stops innovating.
5. Repeat.

Oh fucking great!

[Chas]

I can give you a timeline here.

1: EA buys
2: EA institutes a new work model
3: Shit falls INCREDIBLY far behind
4: EA shepherds it along at the pace of a stunned snail, making promises left and right.
5: Shit falls IMPOSSIBLY far behind (to the point where there's NEGATIVE development on a project)
6: EA plays major catchup and gets the product into a semi-usable beta which it'll release
7: EA finally just closes the project down, stating that it can no longer work on it.

This has been EA's pattern for EVERYTHING

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

[Pojut]

EA has already been acting like a bitch by buying out exclusive licensing deals with the NFL. They seem to be attempting to get their only remaining competition in the sports market out of the way by simply buying them.

I understand that the video game industry is like any other industry in that most companies exist solely for earning as much money as possible...but you know what? There are still some people that take pride in their work, and many of the folks that work under Take Two fall into that category. If they wanted to be owned by a big publisher like EA, they would have accepted the offer. They obviously don't want it, and EA is an even bigger asshole for trying to muscle their way in after they had the door slammed in their face.

As a person with high respect for those that create not just for profit but to make their creative vision a reality, I find EA's deal to be a slap in the face to gamers all over the world. EA has pissed off a LOT of people, and they seem to be content with adding to that number. Fuck EA, fuck their underhanded business practices, and lastly fuck you for supporting and defending them.

Re:

[The Analog Kid]

EA has already been acting like a bitch by buying out exclusive licensing deals with the NFL

Blame the NFL for that, they are the ones that wanted the exclusive deal. EA had no recourse but to get it. (Madden is a cash cow for them, they wouldn't give the up willingly)

I can almost guarantee that if EA buys TT, most of the development staff is going to quit, and reform elsewhere. That's how it done in the gaming industry.

Re:

[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:

[dave562]

And Bullfrog. I want my next Syndicate fix, the bastards!!

Re:After GTAIV is released Take Two will be worthl

[jjohnson]

I think you answered your own question. Take Two has several extremely profitable properties, they just take too long between releases to provide consistent profitability. That's exactly the sort of situation that an EA executive can look at and say "Hmmm... if we marry those properties to our slave ship mentality, we can make huge bucks!"

Instead of GTA IV, it'll be GTA 2008, 2009, 2010...

Re:

[fair_n_hite_451]

jPOD FTW!
 
I love that show.