Rupert Murdoch Considers Entry to Gaming Industry

GamesIndustry.biz reports that News Corporation's Rupert Murdoch is considering acquiring a game publisher. He's apparently "kicking the tires" on everything up to and including EA. From the article: "He highlighted Activision as one games publisher which is being considered for purchase. The Californian company, which is one of the biggest publishers in the world, has a market capitalisation of under $3 billion, compared to around $19 billion for Electronic Arts." It's sobering to consider that as big as EA is within the gaming industry it is small fry compared to the big fish in other sectors.

Comments

Here it comes...

[DesScorp]

...the inevitable Vast Right Wing Conspiracy posts; "Murdoch just wants to turn gaming right like he turned the news right", or something along those lines. Someone will find some reason to complain, and toss in both Fox News and Bill O'Reilly's name into this somehow.

More likely, it's that Fox has such a vast entertainment holdings that Murdoch simply wants to capitalize on them through the game market. The potential is vast if he does so. Everything from the Predator and Alien franchises, to perhaps a GTA-type game based on the cop series The Shield.

This is just business opportunity; nothing more, nothing less.

Re:It worked for AOL/Time Warner

[Dachannien]

The problem in that case was that, while AOL was initially very successful, it failed to account for changes in the ISP marketplace (namely, that people don't want to pay for ad-ridden, content-limited dialup when their cable or telephone company offers no-strings-attached broadband for a similar price).

As long as News Corp picks a company that already has good business sense and that keeps a finger on the pulse of the public, I don't see any real downsides to this. See Sony or Vivendi Universal for evidence of that.

Now, the real test will be whether News Corp can hold a game company without trying to micromanage it....

Re:It worked for AOL/Time Warner

[nelsonal]

All the television moguls are pretty worried that ratings of 18-40 year old males dropped dramatically this year and their bright young advisors told them video games are to blame. They currently deliver a product that only has value if people (preferably young people) watch it, if something else is taking up that time, they want their fingers in that pot as soon as possible. Remember these guys became moguls by purchasing cable networks in the 1980s and 1990s when they were still cheap, they don't want some one else (video games) doing to them what they did to the broad cast industry 10-20 years ago.