Rockstar and of course its most famous gaming achievement ever Grand Theft Auto (4) is apparently a ‘primary interest’ of EA‘s attempted purchase of Take Two games. Take Two turned down EA’s first approach – which made the company approach shareholders directly in what could be seen as a hostile takeover attempt.
Naturally, Take Two had something to say about the company, and in this particular case Strauss Zelnick (the boss) said that EA undervalued the capital. Naturally, being a shareholder himself, he would like EA to wait until the release of Grand Theft Auto – in business terms, the more the game sells then theoretically the share price rises too. It may well be the best selling game of the year, with many expecting it to be a nine million plus seller.
Some speculators are however worried about this development in the games industry, citing the fact that smaller companies are continually being gobbled up. What this could mean is ‘internal strangulation’ of the industry as a whole, meaning games and development goes stale.
EA has been one of the biggest buyers of companies as well as the biggest publisher in the world. Is innovation going to suffer if Rockstar ever falls into the hands of EA? Well who knows. It’s hard to tell, given how many franchises the company now controls. Regardless of the business developments, I just hope that EA and publishers in general keep the business side as little a consideration as possible when pushing out great IP’s like Crysis, Battlefield and Burnout. It’s meant to be ‘play for fun’ after all, right guys?