Comments on: EA to take Take 2?

By: mister slim

mister slim — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 03:52:59 +0000

Oh, I figured it out. This is all part of an elaborately choreographed conspiracy to merge Maxis and Firaxis. A certain Spore hire is just an advanced pawn. Will Wright and Sid Meier are playing the most devious game of all. We’re on to the -axis Illuminati, Soren!

By: Soren Johnson

Soren Johnson — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:58:27 +0000

It would be pretty funny if 2K Boston/Australia got to change their name back to Irrational… :)

By: Dinger

Dinger — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:32:11 +0000

Yup. So either you buy the company, and start the employee retention offensive before you seal the deal(which, to be honest, appears to be EA’s strategy), or (and this was my point above) you don’t buy the company, but threaten to do so. In the latter case, the takeover attempt does two things: it rattles employees, making them consider other work; it also (and in conjunction with the rattling) may help identify the key players. If they think their company’s going to get parted out, or bought up, they’ll be even more interested. So basically, they take the company, and shake it out, seeing what precipitates.

As it stands, I see EA’s move as a bet that GTA IV is a marginal title. Oh, it’ll sell millions of copies regardless. GTA is a huge franchise. But EA is saying: “look, you guys have cutbacks and a major reorganization in the past year. GTA IV is way overdue — heck somebody around here even has a GTA IV tattoo that’s starting to sag –, we’re betting it’s not going to be a huge success. And by the way, if you don’t agree, we’ll make it even more difficult for you guys to deliver.”

Yes, it isn’t all about GTA. In any case, if all you want is IP, then T2′s collection isn’t worth $2 Bil. In that case, you get a better ROI from destroying the company.

By: Lightbulb

Lightbulb — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:05:09 +0000

“Dinger – Elevator assets”

The problem with that logic is that people WILL leave is taken over by EA. Warm bodies are not a reason to buy companies – they will just leave and you are left with nothing.

IP is a safer bet.

By: Taxman

Taxman — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:36:45 +0000

Everyone thinks this is about GTA (understandably so) but I think this is more to do with sports. 2K games sport franchises are the last remaining serious competition to EA in the sports arena which is a huge and very profitable market (also it’s were you can pump out yearly updates that the consumer base will continue to buy unlike GTA games which would cost a fortune and introduce fatigue within the franchise).

By EA taking over 2K they can eliminate the 2K sports games that compete with their own properties & lock up the sports market just for themselves.

GTA/Bioshock/Civ are just side deserts nice ones none the less and EA isn’t going to mess with their recipe for success in fact they could help particularly with Civ games on consoles.

2K is not financially healthy as one analyst pointed out, when they are not selling GTA they are losing money & had to take out 150 million loan recently just to stay afloat, it’s only a matter of time before the shareholders give the okay for EA to take over.

By: Tak

Tak — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:13:14 +0000

That’s not a lie, Crispy. The way I read that is corporate-speak for ‘we need to buy now before the company gets a fresh release and is valued at what they’re actually worth’.

Also, you could consider that EA wants to be careful with their ‘image’ as the family-friendly publisher (though everyone here knows they’ll Butt-Darts 4 if they think it’ll sell). Most of their revenue makers/best sellers are sports and casual games (at a safe guess). GTA4 releases, PTAs and Jack Thompsons the world over get unlimited press time due to the thirteen seconds that the player is in a strip-club (or some other rediculousness) and what’s this? EA wants to buy the company responsible for this affront to all human decency?! They make sports and kids games! OH THE HORROR! Think of the chir’rin, etc. etc.

Them buying now means any project currently nearing completion would most likely mean, contractually, that it’s non of EA’s business. They can claim ‘we had no part in this and assure you it won’t happen under our watch’ or whatever PR-BS they need to, and sit there with their money.

Buy after the comercial success and not only are they paying more, they appear to be a bunch of cash-seakers at the expense of children’s innocence, terrorist, flat tires, and sticky theatre floors.

By: Crispy

Crispy — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:58:02 +0000

Obviously the title should have been “EA to take Take 2, too?”

But “EA to take Take 2″ has a certain chiasmic quality to it.

—

Reading the published letters from EA is a laugh riot. How can they lie so barefacedly?

We believe that moving quickly to negotiate and conclude our proposed merger is in the best interest of Take-Two and EA. Waiting for a later date leaves open significant uncertainty regarding the timing, the probability and the value of a potential transaction and is not in the best interests of either company or Take-Two’s stockholders.

Yerrrrrrrrite.

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:21:52 +0000

I’ve just done a medium length post on the same subject on Preys World
( http://www.preys-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22361&highlight= ) stating why this isn’t necessarily a bad idea, (although I think the asking price is a bit low anyway)

By: Butler`

Butler` — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:30:53 +0000

It’s hard to tell from the outside whether this is a really good time to bid for Take 2, or a really stupid time.

By: Slappeh

Slappeh — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:25:18 +0000

Don’t do it!!!! It’ll all crash and burn!

By: Gameraotaku

Gameraotaku — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 07:19:47 +0000

The_B:

Welcome to business law. A publicly traded company can’t say anything official financially these days without pages upon pages of disclaimers like that. Ugh.

By: Stromko

Stromko — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:48:06 +0000

Don’t underestimate EA’s ability to screw things up. We haven’t yet seen a GTA where dozens of features were ripped out in order to be re-packaged as ‘microtransactions’ or a long series of anemic expansion packs.

The only way I’d see EA taking over yet another company as a good thing, is if a day later all the skilled people quit and start new studios. That would never happen of course, I’m sure they all have to sign contracts where if they ever quit they can’t ever work in software development again.

EA doesn’t have a monopoly on sucking by any means. I mean, look at JoWood. But I can just not buy anything JoWood publishes because I’m sick of their buggy sh*t. No matter how many times I get crapped on by EA there’s really no avoiding them.

Probably only 10% of what they produce is so interesting that I have to play it, and that little number ends up being 50% of what I buy because there’s just not that many games out there. They have the power to shrink that percentage for any reason they feel like, and should they feel less competition to compete they will gladly do so and turn everything into ‘Roster Update Year of Publication’.