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EA Takeover Moves and Countermoves
Details have emerged regarding several EA takeover related stories. The long running dispute with Digital Illusions may be coming to an end as EA has waived the requirement to own majority shares in the company. They still plan to purchase as many shares of the company as possible. Ubisoft announced that they have a defense planned against a hostile takeover bid from EA, should it arise. No mention of what this plan is, of course. In reaction to the recent press coverage of their move to purchase Ubi stock, EA has announced that their purchase was not hostile, and that they'd spoken often with Ubi representatives. From the article: "Florin reiterated that Electronic Arts was not asking for a seat on Ubisoft's board. 'We had the opportunity to buy a 20 percent stake in Ubisoft and we haven't asked for anything... That's not hostile. In our industry, one doesn't make hostile moves because our value lies with people,' he added."
If EA is so eager to buy these companies maybe the current shareholders ought to be asking their boards what value EA sees that they haven't been able to realize.
"our value lies with people," - Companies exist to make money, not care about people. What kind of BS line is this?
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Ah, give them a break, it is not like they are trying to sell a $10,000 USD toaster.
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That statement about EA dying is not true. With a strong cash reserve ( 2.5 billion ) last time I checked, EA isn't going anywhere soon but up. A 20 % investment in Ubisoft was a small transaction for them.
And with EA and Microsoft getting tighter together, well you do the math.
Most of us like the old EA instead of the new one , but they are a financially strong company. They were one of Fortune magazines top picks for the year and their current stock price is around $60.
Sorry they're not going anywhere.
Are these the same people who worked OT and never got paid?
That's not hostile. In our industry, one doesn't make hostile moves because our value lies with people,' he added."
yes, but only when they're valuable for 80 hours a week.
note to mods, here's the point of this joke
" In our industry, one doesn't make hostile moves with a gun because our value lies with beating people."
I think EA is just doing this to keep people guessing and to put their competitors on the defensive.
For basically no cost to EA (they have tons of cash in the bank anyway) they managed to make Ubi (a competitor) hold several emergency board meetings and probably tied up all of senior management for several weeks. Instead of concentrating on making their products, they have to respond to press and government inquiries and come up with a defense strategy.
Furthermore, they got Vivendi involved and probably caused at least some distraction in the management of every other medium-sized publisher. _And_ they diverted some attention from the difficulties EA is having acquiring Dice.
I don't think they really care if they acquire Ubi or not. If it looks doable in a couple months, there's some value there and they'll go ahead. If not, then they probably got a nice short-term return on an investment of some of their spare cash.
all ea games are repetitive to me...anyone else agree ?
I own Fifa 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005, you insensitive clod!
Hostile purchasing is sort of bewildering. I think back to a time when men made tools for the sake of selling them to other men so the town could prosper(think free software movement). I can't imagine any type of hostile purchase in a market setting (You know, markets, those things they had a long time ago. Think Wal-mart without the flourescent lighting). How did this perversion of economics take place?
"You must have Administrator rights in order to buy shares in this company."
The similarities between Electonic Arts' recent practices and those of the world's largest retail company Wal-Mart should be ovious to those with rudimentary economics knowledge.
Electronic Arts can use its leverage and sheer breadth of titles to outcompete others through volume. Wal-Mart also cuts their profit margin very thin, but makes up for it in volume.
If I sell 10000 video games at a profit of $1 a game, and you sell 1000 video games at a profit of $5 a game, I win.
The caveat here is that I have to sell 10 times as many games as you do, which leads to increasing the workforce output in order to increase production time and meet quotas.
Wal-Mart, too, has resorted to cutting its labor costs as dramatically as possible in order to maintain its standing as a volume-based retailer.
However, Electronic Arts is unlike Wal-Mart in a very particular way: they rely on a discretionary product to make their money. Whereas everyone presumably needs T-shirts, food, and chairs, and thus will always *need* Wal-Mart (or at least its products), video games are nonessential and are one of the first things to disappear from a household budget when money is tight.
Unless EA begins to make high-quality games that move to the top of the pack, they will implode the next time a major recession hits. And judging by their volume-over-creativity track record, this is unlikely.
If production is high and wages are low, then isn't that value? :)
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Of course they lie with people. They can't use computers to lie, nobody's come up with software to emulate a P.R. department yet.
You know what bothers me about hearing this these days in regards to EA?
I heard this same thing in the early 90's from coders who used to work for EA back in the 80's but left to start their own companies.
Many of EA's great early works of classic gaming history were coded by people who have long since left. I can't remember WHO said it, but I believe (though I may be wrong) it was either someone from the Bard's Tale (Interplay) or Starflight (Binary Systems) development teams that said something to the effect "EA likes to find stary eyed young programmers with big dreams of success and lure them into slavery with empty promises." (My parahprase since it's been so long.)
I wish I knew who said it and what exactly they said but since it was in a print magazine long ago I haven't been able to find reference to it now days.
Apparently this isn't new for EA. If I remember someone in the 90's saying it about EA from when they worked there in the 80's, I wouldn't have any reason to believe they are any better today.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
Yeah, it went downhill since Jesus bit the dust. FIFA 25 A.D. was where it was at!
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Once the reputation for mediocrity sets in... Slashdot is on the cutting edge of this here, the public hasn't seen it, but they will... they'll go into a death spiral.
Mainstream music has a reputation of mediocrity but that doesn't hurt its sales one bit. People don't care about the mediocrity because their expectations have been adjusted down until they assume mediocrity is the normal state of things; more than that, they assume that mediocrity is unavoidable, and not only is there no reason they should expect more, but they should be grateful that they are able to get this music and grateful that the RIAA has the grace to drop the few breadcrumbs they allow to the few elect artists they can be bothered to allow into the major label umbrella.
All that EA has to do is create that same adjusting of expectations in the video game industry. This isn't hard, and all they have to do is buy enough things. They probably don't even need to try to control the distribution (music stores) and publicization (radio) channels the way the recording industry cartel does. All they have to do is buy up publishers (like ubi soft), so that the capital and publishing rights available by getting a game published from an alternate publisher come down to a small minority of table scraps that cannot possibly sustain any notable number of serious developers making anything except niche and budget titles; and buy up licenses(like the NFL and most major movies of late) so that if a non-EA developer wants to make a game containing characters people have heard of, they better be either Nintendo or Blizzard.
The expectations are already going down. Many video game purchasers already believe mediocrity to simply be the normal state of things. A sizable portion of the video game market buys Madden every year just because it's Madden, without thinking of whether there might be alternatives. Many video game reviewers already ignore the difference between mediocrity and quality and review their games based on what they think the readers want to hear about the game, not on how they think their readers would react to playing the game. Halo 2 was declared by many sources game of the year sight unseen, just because those sources thought that was what they were expected to do.
Quality is, of course, still the best recipe for success, so we haven't reached any point of true danger yet. But once consumers begin to see mediocre products as what to expect, that point where it dawns on them they're paying for mediocrity ceases to have any meaning. They'll realize they're paying for tripe, then shrug, go "eh, but what can you do", and buy more.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
News Corp, (parent of Fox) is owned by Rupert Murdoc, and he's fighting tooth and nail to keep control of it. The board adopted a "poison pill" strategy to prevent Malone from seizing control. How did he do that? Are there any ways Ubisoft can do the same?