Viacom Sneaking Up On Midway Takeover?

Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing more evidence that Viacom may be considering a takeover of publisher Midway, following Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone's increasing financial stake in the company. Redstone noted in an SEC document: "The management of Viacom Inc. has... considered the possibility of participating more extensively in the electronic games business... Midway could be considered as a potential licensee of Viacom intellectual property, or as an acquisition candidate." It's noted that: "Regardless of whether Viacom buys Midway, the filing clears the way with regulators for Midway to compete for Viacom licenses." In any case, with Warner Bros also making in-roads into the game market, it seems some larger media conglomerates are considering getting back into the games industry.

Comments

Ugh

[Dachannien]

This trend is bad news for (well, almost) all of us. Large media companies are unlikely to take the necessary risks that bring unique and interesting games to fruition. Current large game publishers are already notoriously uninspired, imposing their desires for a better bottom line on the creativity of development houses, and increasing the size of the publisher only makes things worse.

In the future, we'll just keep getting games where the concept is the same old stale crap, just with the graphics updated for the newest hardware and algorithms.