Tech Rumor: Microsoft Eyeing EA


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They wouldn't have a defacto monopoly on anything. The sports game licenses already have a loophole for licensed games to be developed by platform holders and Sony has long had a habit of doing so.

baseball yes, and Sony's made the best one for a few years now, but not NFL. NFL has been totally exclusive since 06.

Rock Band? Guitar Hero

Madden? Gameday (and Nintendo clearly doesn't care anymore)

Medal of Honor? Call of Duty

Need for Speed and Burnout? Please, there's plenty of competition out there for that, it just depends on how you want to define the genre

MLB? EA doesn't have one right now, but they'd be able to develop one as an MGS studio

Command and Conquer? There's a massive number of RTS games out there at the moment

Army of Two? This is already pretty much a rip off of an existing genre largely pioneered by Gears of War, but there are equivalents out there that are multiplatform

Dead Space? See Army of Two

Dante's Inferno? Ripoff of God of War

EA is a niche player in RPGs, and hasn't gotten a successful MMO off the ground in years

Some of those franchises are far superior to their competition, however the point being if Microsoft effectively swallowed all of those franchises it would be a dangerous blow gaming. We don't need nor want this.

... very little for Sony (plenty of home-grown games that already compete with EA), but it makes perfect sense for Microsoft.

You've gotta be kidding me. MLB the show, and God of War are much better than their EA counterparts, but you've gotta be kiding me if you think loosing Madden, NCAA, Tiger Woods, RockBand, Battlefield, Need for Speed, and Burnout franchises, plus exciting new games like Brutal Legend, MMA wouldn't be a death sentence for Sony. Sony can't survive only on in house development, and they can't pay for exclusive content like Microsoft can. And like I've said before, No competition is terrible for the consumer.

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Not gonna happen. EA make huge profits out of the Sony and Nintendo markets, it'd be a disaster for the gaming industry.

I agree. It would be a disaster. You never know about these rumors, anyway. There may nothing to it.

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Which for as much as people make jokes about, it's what EA actually do best, bring their games to every platform so everyone can enjoy. They even brought the Orange Box to PS3 owners, even although it wasn't the best port, it was better than nothing for those who didn't have a decent enough PC/360 (considering the price of a PS3 back then I would guess most people had a decent enough PC though :rofl: ).

You need exclusives to make a system a viable purchase or we'd have a one console future, but EA are definitely not the ones to chase after, they provide too many games to too many platforms. MS can easily bag talent elsewhere, if the intention was to buy EA and lock up their franchises.

Definitely fair enough, and I am not really against exclusives at all when we are talking about such things that Gears Of War is a 360 title and Uncharted is a Sony title. I am 110% cool with that. I totally understand the purpose and need for exclusive games for each console, and in fact I am actually all for a decent amount of them as it makes the companies try and step it up to out do the competition. So I should have been a bit clearer on the exclusives part. I meant timed exclusives. DLC exclusives. Etc. Things that make an owner of one console get screwed out of something an owner on another console can enjoy with the same game. That gets back to what I was talking about with the essence, and destroys the fun part of it all.

As you pointed out, I am not nor never would I be for one console simply because I think having options is a good thing and as I said it pushes all companies involved into being that much better. A good example I can use is in my personal opinion, the PSN is not all that good (again this IMO). As not good as I believe it is, I cannot even imagine how poor it would be if Live did not exist and Sony had no reason to try and do the best they can do. Or to flip it around, lets say Uncharted 2 never existed. It is stunning in all regards visually, and I know damn well this pushes other developers just that much more to try and out do it. Yes, developers would still be pushing it I am sure, no argument from me there, but I do believe when a game like Uncharted 2 is shown it makes some MS only developers say "we need to do that much better." That is good for gamers. Period. All for it in every regard.

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I'm totally for a one-console future.

Why?

Because even the ur-console would have to compete against the PC gaming platform.

There's not going to be an end to console revisions until PCs stop getting more powerful.

If Sony went out and created a proper successor to the PSP that didn't suck (Go, I'm looking at you), and Nintendo went off and did whatever the hell they do, and Microsoft controlled the high-end TV console space, I wouldn't be bothered one bit.

Not that that would ever happen. History has taught us that there are always going to be three competitors in console, two winners and a loser. The losers get culled, and someone else steps up to create a new system.

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I'm totally for a one-console future.

Why?

Because even the ur-console would have to compete against the PC gaming platform.

There's not going to be an end to console revisions until PCs stop getting more powerful.

If Sony went out and created a proper successor to the PSP that didn't suck (Go, I'm looking at you), and Nintendo went off and did whatever the hell they do, and Microsoft controlled the high-end TV console space, I wouldn't be bothered one bit.

Good for you, but I like choice, and I like seeing what the three top developers do (Sony/MS/Nintendo).

They all have different morals, different direction and provide different final products. If I had no choice this generation I wouldn't have a Blu Ray player, I wouldn't have a robust online gaming network, I wouldn't have a casual console that for all the bashing it gets provides a gaming outlet to new audiences (wiifit, etc). I'd only have ONE of them, not three.

**** that future, I always want choice, and I always want competition that challenges competitors to change/adapt/evolve.

Choice is pro-consumer, only wanting what YOU want to exist is a flawed logic for the industry.

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I'm totally for a one-console future.

Why?

Because even the ur-console would have to compete against the PC gaming platform.

There's not going to be an end to console revisions until PCs stop getting more powerful.

If Sony went out and created a proper successor to the PSP that didn't suck (Go, I'm looking at you), and Nintendo went off and did whatever the hell they do, and Microsoft controlled the high-end TV console space, I wouldn't be bothered one bit.

Im more for a PC only future as there as they only limit to what you can do with a game is how much you know...

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If this were to happen, I don't see EA going MS exclusive. Probably timed exclusives and all kinds of extras, but I really doubt they would want to lose the profits from being on the PS.

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I'd say this was a good move, purely because if MS were to buy EA then they might stop trying to pump every game out on every available platform so they might focus a bit more on making quality rather than quantity.

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I'd say this was a good move, purely because if MS were to buy EA then they might stop trying to pump every game out on every available platform so they might focus a bit more on making quality rather than quantity.

Yup, very true :yes: Not to mention the games would be better on Live too :)

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Microsoft says EA purchase rumor is false

Electronic Arts stock jumped 4 percent Wednesday amid talk that Microsoft might be interested in buying the major video-game publisher.

"There's talk that Microsoft might be interested in acquiring Electronic Arts. It's unsubstantiated chatter, but it's out there," Frederic Ruffy, options strategist at WhatsTrading.com in New York, told Reuters. The news agency also reported that a London-based trader has heard similar talk in Europe.

However, Microsoft spokesman David Dennis dispelled the rumor.

"There is no truth to this rumor," he said in an e-mail to seattlepi.com, "we have no plans to purchase EA."

http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/180058.asp

Quoting it, because seems like no one noticed it.

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Well, it peaked at $20.29 yesterday, was down to $19.83 at the end of trading. In pretrading it's down almost 3%. Trading doesn't start in the US for another hour and fifty minutes or so.

I'd also like to note that denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Companies say things like that in some cases just to prevent competing bids.

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Wouldn't this get ripped apart by competition regulators? Think about every EA game being an MS/360 exclusive :x it would totally distort the market.

The Antitrust division doesn't care about the games industry; watch them, they only seem to care about markets that effect the government; e.g. cell phones and business software.

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this would not be anti-trust, we said that already. the purchase of one company out of several doesn't constitute a monopoly. Forcing vendors to stick with one operating system - mostly anti-trust. Ma Bell - anti-trust. Even 3M - maybe anti-trust. If MS bought EA and made it impossible for Activision and others to publish games, then that's a problem, but it won't happen.

And there was always platform-envy. I remember 2600 vs Colecovision, C64 vs Atari XL, Master System vs NES, Amiga vs ST vs PC, arcade vs home versions...need i go on? Every generation thinks they're doing something new, that's rarely true.

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Wouldn't this get ripped apart by competition regulators? Think about every EA game being an MS/360 exclusive :x it would totally distort the market.

You mean the same way competition regulators intervened when Sony paid off other studios and similar to offer exclusive Blu-ray titles?

I don't see it distorting the market at all. It would seriously hurt Sony, which is why I think they might do it. Microsoft has money for it. If that happened Xbox 360 would be the only console offering EA titles.

There's no reason to regulate anything as it is not illegal. EA is not the sole game provider and actually it's not even top one at that. I don't see any problems with the purchase.

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We should just have one console format. :) THat way consumers wouldn't get confused and developers would only develop the best possible game on one platform.

I remember something like that being said once for some other things ;)

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We should just have one console format. :) THat way consumers wouldn't get confused and developers would only develop the best possible game on one platform.

I remember something like that being said once for some other things ;)

We do more or less have one format, the PC, consoles are just a offshot of the PC hardware tweaked for games/media only. It's also why the PC version of games compared to the 360 or PS3 versions are always better.

In the end Consoles are to the PC as the PSP is to the PS3 in a sense.

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We do more or less have one format, the PC, consoles are just a offshot of the PC hardware tweaked for games/media only. It's also why the PC version of games compared to the 360 or PS3 versions are always better.

In the end Consoles are to the PC as the PSP is to the PS3 in a sense.

but then again you have PC games which are basically ports of console games... and then you have console games which just downright suck... some games are both, PC ports of a crappy console game...

how many times, on the PC, you have seen games getting dumbed down because they were being released for the consoles as well?

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MS buys up developers, closes them.

EA buys up developers, closes them.

MS buys up EA,... profit

God creates man.

God creates Woman.

Man destroys God.

MS buys up developers, closes them.

EA buys up developers, closes them.

MS buys up EA and they close each other.

Sony inherits the Earth.

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