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."

Comments

If this goes through..

[kvezach]

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

Re:If this goes through..

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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.

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

[Shakrai]

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.

I watch them to do this to Maxis after they bought them out. We went from an absolutely great concept (Sim City) that was implemented nearly perfectly in Sim City 2000 (given the technological limitations of the time) to unstable bloated garbage that cared more about pretty graphics (Sim City 3000) then gameplay and required Google's server farm to run at a decent speed....

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.

Why'd ya have to sell out Will?

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

[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: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/. 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.

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.

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.