There is currently an attempt by Electronic Arts (EA) to purchase Take-Two Interactive and are supposedly offering £1bn for it. The purchase attempt has been on going for a while only becoming public in February (2008) after having private attempts rejected by Take-Two. Take-two interactive are the owners of four games publishers one of which is Rockstar Games who, as you all know, produces the Grand Theft Auto (GTA) series of games. Other publishers owned by Take-Two are Irrational (Bioshock), Firaxis (Civilisation) and Visual Concepts (Sports games).


The cheif Executives of both companies, EA - John Riccitiello and Take-Two - Straus Zelnick, have opposing views of the take over bid. Zelnick claims that the offer under values the company and thinks that this is an attempt to purchase the company cheaply before the latest release of GTA. The fact is that the offer is well above the market value of the company based on its current share price. EA have placed the offer on the table and have approached share holders in an attempt to convince them to accept. Riccitiello states that the offer is not enough and that EA should wait until after the release of GTA on 29 April but the current offer only lasts until midnight on 11 April. This date is the day after a Take-Two share holders meeting where, obviously, the bid will be the main topic.


I think one fear of this bid is that EA will destroy the creativeness of the company and the games produced by the four companies listed will decrease in quality. There must be a reason this opinion exists but EA claim that they value and encourage this kind of thing and can point to many games that have increased in both popularity and quality since they were taken over. Titles such as Sim City and NEed for Speed are quoted in respect of this by EA. Another issue the Take-two may have is that the primary concern of the take over is to remove the competition in the sports game genre by removing, or closing, Visual Concepts. EA state that this is just not true as their main interest in the purchase is to gain the ownership of GTA.


There seems to be acurrent trend in the gmaes industry of companies merging and is probably just a natural progression for the business. If you were to analyse most business types you would find that a lot of companies turn into a few smaller ones over time. As lon as there is still a decent amount of competition it should be good over all for games. We will all have to wait until April to find out the next chapter in this little story.