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Electronic Arts Offers $2B For Take Two
quanticle writes "The New York Times is reporting that EA has offered $2B for Take Two Entertainment. The effort appears to be a move to consolidate the two companies before Take Two releases the next iteration of its blockbuster franchise, Grand Theft Auto 4. Take Two has politely declined the offer."
Please don't let EA screw up another good game studio.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
...and in the spirit of GTA will start randomly shooting people, stealing cars and running people down, and picking fights with random street walkers.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Disaster has been adverted.
I think we are just going to end up with one massive games company.
in response to the offer, take two has blown up several cars outside EA's offices and triggered a turf war.
Many Take Two shareholders are suing the company for acting outside of the best interest of it's share holders. Other shareholders have resorted to robbing Take Two employees' cars and using them to pick up hookers before taking their money and "disposing" of them.
I wonder if Take Two's shareholders will sue the board now similarly to Yahoo's shareholders.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
If EA buys this company it means there is another great game franchise not worth buying due to their machavellian work environment. YES you can go work for someone else yada yada yada.... But every decent game franchise that comes out the Nazi Thugs from EA either attempt to buy them out or sue them into oblivion.
Please don't make baby jesus cry and succumb to the whims of the truly evil empire. Microsoft has plenty to learn from EA, Balmer looks like a Carebear on downers compared to the jackbooted thugs of EA.
"Take-Two is known as a mercurial one-hit wonder." You mean Rockstar's Table Tennis wasn't a smash hit? Go figure ;-)
Careful What You Wish For....
...was due a typo: "...Electronic Arts Offers $2B for Take Two..." as what it should actually say is: "...Electronic Arts Offers 2billion pounds For Take Two..."
I mean common guys! Firstly just so you know her in the UK be aware a billion GBP is worth a LOT more than a US billion and secondly common take a look at the value (oxymoron?) of the dollar vs UK pound currently! Thus just change the $ to a pound sign and then your talking!
Thanks all your friends @ Take Two!
Take Two declines to Take Two Billion
Given Hillary Clinton's ongoing fight to convince America that she's better at parenting our kids than we are, these sorts of buyouts may wind up being poor judgment calls should she somehow get elected...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Seriously, anyone who writes such common English cannot be taken seriously, especially when they claim to come from the part of the world that spawned the language.
On an actually serious note, don't Europeans have billion == 10^6 and million == 10^9 (flipped compared to North America)
GTA and Crackdown creator runs down his contemporary-themed PC, 360 MMOG
removing "the grind" [is] a top priority
I really hope Take Two resists this, or GTA 4 will be their last good game for sure. I really don't want that, and I think many agree with me, because that game is just so freaking good!
GTA 6: Parental Approval!
GTA 7: Sunday Driver!
GTA 8: Horse and Buggy!
Nope. The "long scale" you're thinking of goes roughly as follows: million = 10^6 milliard = 10^9 billion = 10^12 billiard = 10^15 etc etc
I read another article where an EA bigwig was dismayed by EA's consistently low ratings at metacritic and other sites. Seems like a transparent attempt to eliminate competition with their crappy sports games.
It varies from country to country in Europe. In Denmark we use million as 10^6 and billion as 10^12.
Now we can get set our clocks to a new GTA release every year with minor modifications as fanbois praise it.
How odd, in my country we use mega 2^20 and giga 2^30
Stuff like this riles me up and makes me want to say as a gamer I will just support (good) games developed by privately owned companies. But then, who's to say what'll happen to those companies a few years down the road? Ultimately, at the end of the day I think the best solution is to either boycott video games, or stop caring who owns what to a lesser degree.
It infects healthy cells, multiplies like crazy, introduces all kinds of horrible mutations then eventually moves on, leaving dead tissue in its wake. I think in biology it's called that Cancer.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
..."politely?" Okay, they may have used polite and diplomatic language, but Take Two told EA to f*ck right the f*ck off, and cram a few sharp pointy sticks in various orifices and organs in the process. Their response goes so far as to call the EA offer irresponsible and (by inference) insulting.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
err no
Million == 10^6
Billion == 10^12 (at least in UK, but finance has accepted the Americanism of billion == 10^9)
Could it be they want to consolidate as many competitors as possible before a semi-reasonable person takes over the FTC? Lately, almost every merger, regardless of how ridiculous, in the US has been approved. But come 2009, would that continue?
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/10-most-anticipated-games-of-2008/1177969
Grand Theft Auto 4
Smash Bros. Brawl
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue
Metal Gear Solid 4
Halo Wars
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
Fallout 3
Spore
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King
Final Fantasy XIII
Of that list, I see only one title based on a 100% new intellectual property: Spore. One guess who is publishing that title...
Irony?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Who read the headline as $28? This concept of B confuses and infuriates me!
Nothing makes me think more about eternal life and salvation than running over a hooker and driving drunk.
Perhaps it's referring to the fact that closing the deal, merging the operations, and getting everything running smoothly isn't an instantaneous process, and if they're going to do it, they'd like to get it done before it interferes with this years Christmas season.
I'm guessing, though.
I doubt very much we'll only every have the One Big Gaming company - games would suck so much people would eventually stop buying them.
I was too busy playing games back then, and less busy thinking about them--besides that I was just a kid--but didn't something very much like that actually already happen once sometime in the 80s or 90s?
The difference, now, is that video games are breaking into the "real world" and are becoming akin to movies and television. They'll suck, sure, but people won't stop buying them, and the medium will become permanently bankrupt, speaking to creativity, with only the rare gem from an independent studio shining out once in a long while. And you'll still probably somehow have to put up with advertisements to see those gems.
No; in the UK, the US definition of billion (10^9) has taken over and is now the overwhelmingly accepted standard for all uses. I can't recall the last time I heard the old (10^12) definition used here- except in a discussion like this- and I'm sure I read that it's officially considered obsolete somewhere.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
One has fond memories of IP, so it's not surprising that you'd get lots of anticipation for sequels over originals.
Spore brings up an interesting point: We should be celebrating good game creators, the way we celebrate the directors of movies. Thus the hype comes for talented teams, rather than the just the intellectual properties they create.
Finally George W. Bush is unlocked as an American leader, and the Fox News World Wonder is available, after it is built you can declare war on any nation with a Weapons of Mass Destruction claim even if they don't have any. It also allows you to remain in power even if your people find out the nation had no WMDs and it is draining your economy as well.
Special units, Dick Cheney unit to form Haliburton corporation to get no-bid oil contracts on any nation you invade. Colin Powell unit to help ease opposition to the war with faked evidence for it. Condeliza Rice unit to get other civilizations to side with you on the war. Bill O'Reilly unit to keep your population happy even if they oppose the war.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Continuing the off-topic discussion, "for example" is actually represented with "e.g.", which is Latin for "exempli gratia".
I know I'll probably get modded off-topic (or flamebait) for this but it's relevant to the parent post and I'm curious- what is it with everyone in countries other than the US being so proud of how their currency is doing? I mean, when I go to countries where the US dollar is more valuable than the local currency I'm happy because stuff is cheaper, but it's not something I care enough about that I go bragging about it. But when I was up in Canada when their dollar overtook the US dollar, and that's all every Canadian I met could talk about. Now the US dollar is (slightly) back up on the Canada dollar, but I didn't even hear about it here and I know that very few Americans actually give a crap. Of course, maybe that lack of caring is why the US dollar is dying...
All hail the EA death march!
One of us! One of us! One of us!
What happens to the Stock tomorrow?
So the question is, what did they offer forty-three of?
Husks of overworked employees? Content-free games?
. . . Wizened 6502 assembly hackers?
EA will move in for hostile takeover. This is unrelated to GTA4. EA wants to eliminate 2K Sports.
The last game I bought from a store was Bioshock, and it ran unnecessarily slowly on my new machine, and couldn't find DirectX 10. After a fair bit of patching, I got it to work, and played it to completion - and was somewhat disappointed, because it began to degenerate into the usual repetitive style of shooter.
And then I realised that the problem was certainly not Bioshock, but the game industry itself. Games these days seem to be rushed out in a state barely past beta, because of extremely strict deadlines. It seems to be a matter of course now to go hunting around for patches and vista fixes and so forth for every game you buy - for an awful lot of money, I might add.
They also seem to be generally repetitions of themes and styles years old. Not only is it more Metal Gear, FIFA, GTA and Final Fantasy games, but the actual gameplay of these hasn't changed for years - particularly in the FPS genre - and I'm looking for NEW games, not more of a game I've already played.
Well, I've had enough of it. After Bioshock, I stopped buying commercial mainstream games, and instead put my money into great independent games like: Mount&Blade, Darwinia, Flatspace (1 & 2), Uplink, Teudogar and the Alliance of Rome, and Defcon. These games have provided me with much better value for money, and usually are better, more enjoyable and more *original* games.
Super Smash Bros Melee (the prequel to Brawl) came out 6 years ago. Thats an incredibly long time for the video game industry where the average sequel comes out between 2-3 years after the previous one.
Halo Wars??? Uh, you do know that Halo Wars is a PREQUEL and that its a RTS which makes it the farthest thing from a FPS there is right?
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is hardly a sequel. Take away the Star Wars theme and you instantly have brand new IP, they're just using the Star Wars name to cash in.
Fallout 2 came out in 1998. Fallout 3 is (expected to) be released in 2008. I think ten years is a pretty decent gap in avoiding the sequel tag.
Spore, as you said, is brand new IP so that makes the list evenly split between sequels and brand new IP.
But I bet Patrick Moore wishes he could still use it :-)
Depends if the shareholders can be convinced that this is ultimately the best decision or not. If the board can present a convincing case that ultimately it'll be better to reject this, then everything will be fine. I mean just because a buyout is for a certain amount over market value of the shares, doesn't mean that it is worth it. Maybe GTA 4 does such good business that it really pushes up share prices.
However, clearly EA is hoping that the shareholders will push the issue. The article notes that EA approached them in private first and were rebuffed. The reason they are now going public is to let the shareholders know that there is an offer. The shareholders now can bring pressure on the company. Doesn't necessarily have to be a lawsuit either, shareholders are literally owners of the company. So at a shareholder meeting, they can vote the execs out and vote new ones in.
Regardless of what goes on, I'm guessing EA's buyout will be successful. They are offering a substantial premium over the current stock value, the shareholders are probably going to force the issue.
Electronic Acquisitions. Sheesh. Stop buying good companies and ruining them.