Activision Blizzard may buy Take Two.

[kupomogli]

I'm sure everyone has heard this rumor by now. It's on pretty much every gaming site. What are your thoughts?

I could care less about Take Two, but Rockstar has been releasing some amazing games recently and it might affect the quality of the next games Rockstar releases.

Grand Theft Auto 4 and Episodes are my favorite GTA games. Everything prior to San Andreas in my opinion has just sucked balls and San Andreas was just decent. What happens when Activision decides to make yearly installments of this franchise? Even if they use the already great Rage Engine, if GTA4 received the sort of rush job that Call of Duty Black Ops did, comparing the sizes of both games, it'd more than likely become an unplayable mess. It also doesn't help that a lot of people don't like the Rage Engine because the GTA series going in a more realistic direction(I personally love the realism in GTA4 over the rest of the games.)

Does anyone think this may be the reason they cancelled True Crime Hong Kong? If by chance they do aquire Take Two, would they rather have people torn between two different franchises like True Crime and GTA, or would they rather people all go towards one franchise. Maybe they decided taking a hit on True Crime to keep everyone under one flag. It's a pretty bullshit move if that's the reason.

[The 1 2 P]

I'm not sure that Take Two would approve this deal simply because they are not structured to release a new game every year for each of their franchises and thats all Activision wants to do is milk every franchise they have until it dies. As far as a hostile takeover goes, all the talent could just leave and refuse to work for Activision-controlled Take Two. And on that note, the Houser Brothers(responsible for the GTA series) contract will be up at the end of this year. So they get to renegotiate rather they want to resign or not. Unless Activision payed them enough money to ignore the fact that they are going to kill the GTA series due to annual releases I don't think they would be very interested in working for Kotick and company.

[Swamperon]

I hope not, and if they are attempting to they will have to offer some serious money. EA were constantly rebuffed in 2008 when they attempted a takeover, I think the final offer was over $2 Billion for the company.

T2 basically said 'Stick it up your arse'.

[kupomogli]

I hope not, and if they are attempting to they will have to offer some serious money. EA were constantly rebuffed in 2008 when they attempted a takeover, I think the final offer was over $2 Billion for the company.

I used to really dislike EA because, while they weren't as bad as Activision, they weren't that much better of a company once they started ruining Need For Speed. EA has changed a lot since then and has become one of the best companies this gen. While sports titles, Sims, and Need For Speed still receive annual releases, Need For Speed seems to have went back its roots as being a "racing" title. EA has also put in a lot of funding for new ips, unfortunately a lot of these ips have lost money for EA, even though they were some pretty good games. Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno, and Saboteur were all great games that really get no recognition, while others such as Bioshock(no personal experience,) Dragon Age, and Dead Space have done well in sales.

*edit*

Removed Battlefield BC2. That's not really a new ip.

[Swamperon]

I used to really dislike EA because, while they weren't as bad as Activision, they weren't that much better of a company once they started ruining Need For Speed. EA has changed a lot since then and has become one of the best companies this gen. While sports titles, Sims, and Need For Speed still receive annual releases, Need For Speed seems to have went back its roots as being a "racing" title. EA has also put in a lot of funding for new ips, unfortunately a lot of these ips have lost money for EA, even though they were some pretty good games. Mirror's Edge, Dante's Inferno, and Saboteur were all great games that really get no recognition, while others such as Bioshock(no personal experience,) Dragon Age, Dead Space, and Battlfield BC2, have done well in sales.

Oh I agree that EA have much improved since their former 'evil empire' days. I admired them for admitting as such about how crap they used to be. If only Activison would do the same...

Regardless, I'd prefer T2 to stay independent.

[sheath]

EA bought off the NFL because they couldn't handle competition. Five years later it is going to take a lawsuit to do anything about it. That is all I need to know about them.

[Cryomancer]

At this point, I wouldn't miss Rockstar. I've recentely looked over their catalog, and came to the conclusion that I really only like 3 or 4 of their games, and the last one was Bully. Activision is definately the new evil company though, and I'm sure they'll kill off plenty of stuff before we shift to the new new evil.

[G-Boobie]

At this point, I wouldn't miss Rockstar. I've recentely looked over their catalog, and came to the conclusion that I really only like 3 or 4 of their games, and the last one was Bully. Activision is definately the new evil company though, and I'm sure they'll kill off plenty of stuff before we shift to the new new evil.

New new evil = Square Enix?

New new new evil = Co-title between Atlus and Quaker Oats Game Publishing Division. Look for that around 2015, second fiscal quarter.

Take Two just hit a profitable quarter. It would be a weird move to sell now. On the other hand, acquiring the GTA, Bioshock, Borderlands, and Red Dead franchises might be worth the money to Activision. It's not like they're low on cash or anything.

[incubus421]

EA bought off the NFL because they couldn't handle competition. Five years later it is going to take a lawsuit to do anything about it. That is all I need to know about them.

Proof = ESPN NFL 2k5 is still the best football game since EA bought rights.

[Collector_Gaming]

not sure what to say about activisions role on this

but i can say i remember a long time ago i read on a forum or something about a guy a who worked for EA that quit and posted about how they treated their grunt help that coded and did all the back bone work for the games like crap.
and that they pushed everything way to hard to make games come out earlier then they should like one of the managers didn't know a damn thing about video games or technology at all really.. he was only hired there cause he had a background to constantly whip people around to make them work that much harder and faster.

of course i think i remember reading about this after EA starting buying out everything under the sun to try and shut out other game companies.
So who knows

If i was activision and i saw how profitable we were i would personally leave the other companies alone and just focus on what we were doing instead of what everyone else was doing. Cause just like the Euro as we found out through italy.
Once one giant goes down... the rest suffers and they have restructure everything to make it balance.
But then again i make a horrible business owner as i am not money hungry like all large business owners

[Cryomancer]

New new evil = Square Enix?

They wish. They're too bust making FF games nobody wants and ignoring Dragon Quest to the point where Nintendo has to publish the games now, with their crazy ideas like "advertising" them. Sure they bought Eidos, but they aren't exactly a huge name anymore. If anything Namco would be higher on the food chain than SE.

[Tupin]

They wish. They're too bust making FF games nobody wants and ignoring Dragon Quest to the point where Nintendo has to publish the games now, with their crazy ideas like "advertising" them. Sure they bought Eidos, but they aren't exactly a huge name anymore. If anything Namco would be higher on the food chain than SE.

That and releasing games out of the blue that no one pays attention to because they suck (Mindjack) or look generic, but are actually good. (Nier)

[CelticJobber]

I hope not. Activision is where good games go to die. They'd churn out 4 or 5 GTA's in a year and kill off the series. Bobby Kotick is the closest thing to Satan himself in the videogame industry.

And I completely disagree with the OP's assessment of GTA titles, part IV was a major let-down after San Andreas and Vice City.

[sheath]

And in other news, EA just renewed its contract with the NFL. Meanwhile Activision is in the process of closing Bizarre Creations so they can focus on killing the COD franchise with bi-monthly releases. Only slightly unrelated, The Code Monkeys is shutting down this week too.

Boy oh boy is it a good thing these massive corporations are staying afloat with our predictable purchasing habits.