How much money would it take to buy EA??

Timedog

good credit (by proxy)
I was just thinking that if MS, or any of the 3 companies if they have the money, bought EA then the next generation is basically over for the other 2 companies, even Sony. What would it take to buy out a company as huge as EA???
 
They'd have to value what they have now, in terms of a healthy business, what IP they have, what rights they have yet to expire.. and then there's the fact they seem to be the industry's most secure and successful third party publisher, with a lot of growth potential and confidence...

its too big to be brought under first party ...
 
buying it wouldn't mean that all of their titles would have to be platform exclusive. I'm sure only a couple of titles I can think of offhand would be more than enough to cripple the competition pretty bad.

They could rebrand the bigger, platform exclusive titles to something like "EA Future" or "EA Sports Future" to let everyone know exactly what titles would be platform exclusive.

I just thought of something, if MS bought EA we could get a true sequel to Goldeneye!
 
if EA and Nintendo are of comparable size, couldn't MS do this since they were at one point wanting to buy Nintendo?
 
I think the other problem is it could cause issues with the licenses that EA has like the NFL, LOTR, Harry Potter, etc.

Those corporations might consider it a breach of agreement if their property now is limited to only one console.

The suits at Warner Bros. want Harry Potter on every system for example, and the NFL would never give out their license like that if it couldn't be on all major platforms.

EA doesn't own most of their licenses. They just can't limit those franchises to a select userbase and not expect problems.
 
They didn't support dreamcast. At that time they were basically supporting PS1 and PS2 exclusively.
 
They didn't have a lot of their licenses back then though either (Harry Potter, LOTR, exclusive NFL, etc.).

There's no way they could retain their movie licenses if they were only on one platform, that's for damn sure. No Hollywood suit would settle for that, they want their merchandise everywhere.

Nintendo btw has been estimated to be valued at around $25 billion.
 
They wouldn't have to go platform exclusive with all titles. That wouldn't make any sense. A few key titles would be enough. The investment would never ever be recouped.

Wasn't NFL not allowed on N64? And movie liscenses exclusives not being platform exclusive wouldn't really make a huge difference either way.
 
I would think that MS would be the only company that could potentially buy EA but would fail because of :-

1) EA would fight it tooth and nail
2) Antitrust

In saying that, I imagine that Sony would love to buy EA as well - maybe they have the resources to do it as well
 
gollumsluvslave said:
I would think that MS would be the only company that could potentially buy EA but would fail because of :-

1) EA would fight it tooth and nail
2) Antitrust

In saying that, I imagine that Sony would love to buy EA as well - maybe they have the resources to do it as well

Sony has less liquid money than EA plus too much debt outside of PSX division
 
satan.jpg

"Hello EA... I've come to collect on our agreement."
 
Isn't EA's bussiness model buit around bein mult-platoform these days... could they be profitable as a one unit publisher?

-Exis
 
briefcasemanx said:
I just thought of something, if MS bought EA we could get a true sequel to Goldeneye!

Ferrarisimo said:
Free Radical would have to buy EA for that to happen.
Actually, you're both wrong: Nintendo owns the original Goldeneye code, not Rare/MS or Free Radical.
 
I bet if everyone on GAF donated some money we would get enough money to buy them out. What do you guys think?? It would be cool for us to own the biggest NA publisher! :D
 
Firest0rm said:
I bet if everyone on GAF donated some money we would get enough money to buy them out. What do you guys think?? It would be cool for us to own the biggest NA publisher! :D
I'll chip in $1!

Jeez, we're practically halfway there already!
 
Market Cap is around $16.9 billion.
That's up almost $2 billion in four months.
 
Depends entirely on how their shares are distributed and what restrictions they have governing people having to sell back to EA corporate before selling to outside entities. Many major corporations have specific rules that prevent a full stock buyout and most investors don't even consider it unless business is slow (Oracle/Peoplesoft) and it looks like outside investment will bring things to the table that they don't currently have (Sprint/Nextel, Cingular/AT&T Wireless). In many cases it requires the market cap plus 150% for an ourright buyout so you're talking about at least 45 billion - and that's only if the investors and the board of EA went for it..... which they wouldn't.
 
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