I have no idea what they have in mind to put it public, but all morning I’ve been seeing EA’s desire to buy out Take-Two Interactive.  They had made a proposal earlier this month to buy them out, and Take-Two rejected.  Prepare yourselves, I’m about to use the site as a soapbox.

Now, reading the proposal, you can see EA is trying to make themselves sound like good guys.  They know their reputation, and they know they need to make a lot of internal changes.  We’ve been seeing EA try some new risks with IP (Dead Space and Army of Two), and have been doing a lot of internal re-workings in order to improve.  I respect them for that, but does that mean they should right out and buy Take-Two?

They state that the company is facing some potential problems that mean they’ll be dying out soon.  Given how well Bioshock did, does the company really seem that in trouble?  Or how about the upcoming Grand Theft Auto IV?  I’ve already seen speculation that EA really just wants to grab some of the profits to that game’s release? Given how much money Take-Two has already made from it through exclusive content for the Xbox 360, I’d say that title alone is likely to carry the company quite well.

My real problem with this, however, is that EA wants to buy yet another game company.  How many more do they plan to buy until there is no more?  It is commonly said that competition breeds innovation, and I personally would like to see companies like EA stop buying studios, especially ones that are as large as Take-Two.

If you in the community agree or disagree, leave your comments in the forums.  Since EA put this proposal out to the public, they should be able to witness feedback from the community.  If you disagree, make it known.  Let them know that we need to see these changes first, because as it is a lot of their “new risks” and “changes” have yet to come to fruition.  I’d like to give them a chance, but I need to see if they themselves are going to become a respectable game development company before they go out to buy good talent.

- Chris Cesarano (Grohdinger)

This entry was posted on Monday, February 25th, 2008 at 10:05 am and is filed under Gaming Industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.