   Next item on EA's shopping list: Take-Two Interactive
  Only months after the acquisition of the Bioware Corp., Electronic Arts bids on Rockstar's parent company:Quote:NY TimesElectronic Arts, the video gaming giant, made an unsolicited $2 billion bid on Sunday for rival Take-Two Interactive, publisher of the Grand Theft Auto franchise, a deal that would further a wave of consolidation in the rapidly growing industry.I'll refrain from making the usual EA jokes.   
  While Take-Two's most famous dev house is Rockstar, they also own 2K Sports and Firaxis. They shouldn't be ignored either; I'm not sure whether an EA owned 2K Sports would remain intact.   ;EA: Game developers! SO HUNGRY!! NUM NUM NUM!!!Person: But EA, why can't you even make a good game with all the studios you own now?EA:...EA: MORE STUDIOS FOR EA!! ROAR! NUM NUM NUM!!!   ;  Surely it's not about making good games with their current studios, but acquiring successful/profitable brands/franchises?   ;  So I assume this "wave of consolidation" will result in more similar, shorter, more expensive, less imaginative games? I'm no socialist but in my view, when multinationals get involved with an art form, it becomes less than artistic.   ;  My fear is that EA is going to collapse eventually, and take much of the funding from titles for several years. After all, what investor would want to put their money in an industry that sees such a massive collapse as EA going down?One company controls too much of the mainstream industry, too much of the advertising. Too many people buy their games, get pissed off with the crappy quality and lack of real polish or original ideas year after year, and struggle to find anything else on a large scale. Eventually we see their sales fall out, and EA lose billions over a few years because people are just plain fed up with buying their crap year after year when there was no drive for EA developers to put true effort into making new things.EA is likely viewed by many investors, schooled in traditional economics, to be exactly how a company should be done. Fast turn around times on new products, shipping something to customers as soon as possible, controlling the market as best they can. That isn't really what the industry needs. These people with the money see EA go down, and there is a good chance many of them will refuse to waste their money on 'completely unprofitable, long term ventures'.Then again we might see a golden age after EA's fall, their best of the best coming together to form new development studios. Tossing out all the mediocre developers who were hired over the years, either as low level cheap and poor code monkeys or those who just grew lax and lazy, and seeing a hand full of new, high end innovative games that people working for EA always wanted to make but were never allowed.Lets throw the dice and all support only EA for the next 5 years and then just stop buying from them!   ;Quote:Original post by Trapper ZoidI'm not sure whether an EA owned 2K Sports would remain intact.It would so rock if it didn't. Let the sports genre ossify and crumble.   ;  All over before it began. Take-Two tells EA to screw off;Quote:Original post by booleanAll over before it began. Take-Two tells EA to screw offNot quite. This was unlikely to be a friendly takeover anyway. From here EA goes to the stockholders.   ;  It might not be so bad as everybody says. After all, don't monopolies in the Software industry produce just as good quality stuff as everybody else? [looksaround]