14 DAY TRIAL // We all know the really long story behind EA's proposition to publisher Take Two, which has quite a rich portfolio, with the likes of former Irrational Games studio, now 2K Boston and Australia, the developers of Bioshock, or Grand Theft Auto creators Rockstar Games. The news that the negotiations have seized and EA broke all further efforts into the takeover has brought Take Two back onto the market, or at least some of their studios.
Activision boss Bobby Kotick has recently dodged a question regarding his company's interest for the Rockstar studio, regarding an offer that had been made to founders Sam and Dan Houser. He preferred to keep the secrecy around the presumed talks and limited his thoughts only to this statement: “We really embrace the individual studio model. We know how to take studios and talented teams and appropriately incentivize them. We’ve definitely become the destination location for independently minded entrepreneurial talent”.
What does this highly modest statement mean? They know how to take over studios, fact proved by the Blizzard merger at the beginning of 2008, and have the money needed for improving independent studios, being one of the biggest game developers. The already famous franchises that belonged to Activision, like Call of Duty or Guitar Hero, are now in the company of the Warcraft, Diablo or Starcraft series after the merger with Blizzard, and one thing's for sure, the Grand Theft Auto franchise wouldn't look so bad along such great games.
But Activision isn't the only company interested in the Houser brothers. Electronic Arts, after breaking off discussions with the Take Two board of stockholders, is rumored to start talks with the minds behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise. If we are to believe the statements of the Take Two chairman of the board, Strauss Zelnick, that other companies have manifested interest in the publisher, we're heading for a bidding war on the gaming market.