According to the news on May 22, the video game market is integrating in an unprecedented way, and EA is also involved. The company is also reportedly negotiating a merger with Disney and other potential buyers, including cuniversal. However, no agreement has been reached.
According to senior media reporter Dylan Beyers, in recent years, with media companies becoming more and more interested in the fast-growing game industry, art power CEO Andrew Wilson and art power have negotiated with many different potential bidders, including Disney, apple and Amazon.
Several other sources familiar with these negotiations also said that EA has always been seeking to sell itself. After Microsoft reached an acquisition deal with Activision Blizzard, EA became bolder. Others said that EA is more interested in merging with other companies, which will enable Wilson to continue to serve as the CEO of the merged company.
However, it is clear that the negotiations between EA and nbcuniversal have made the greatest progress. According to Byers, Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, nbcuniversal's parent company, is seeking to spin off its entertainment group into an independent entity and merge with art power. There are rumors that the deal will allow Wilson to run the new company. However, the negotiations eventually broke down due to price differences.
"We have no comment on the rumors and speculation about mergers and acquisitions. We are confident that we will continue to operate with growth. We have a series of amazing game portfolios, build businesses around strong IP, talented teams make games, and an ecosystem of more than 500 million players. Our future is still very bright," said John reseburg, a spokesman for EA, in a statement
In the past year, there has been a wave of acquisitions in the field of video games. In January this year, take two, the publisher of Grand Theft Auto, announced its acquisition of Zynga for us $12.7 billion, and Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, the developer of call of duty, for us $69 billion. A few weeks later, Sony paid $3.6 billion for Bungie, the developer of Destiny 2. Many analysts believe that these prices have been greatly raised, which may mark a new round of crazy integration in the game industry.
At the earnings conference call in February, Wilson hinted that the company focused on acquisitions rather than being acquired. For example, Yidian spent $5 billion last year to buy a game studio to expand its scale. But now it seems that the company is actively seeking other ways to expand its scale. Byers said Wilson's recent approach to Disney was to establish a more meaningful relationship with Disney, rather than simply pursuing a license agreement.
The news of seeking to sell or acquire coincided with the loss or abandonment of a number of existing maximum license agreements. Although EA recently revealed that it is currently developing three new Star Wars games, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen order, which is rumored to be launched in early 2023, its star wars exclusive license agreement with Disney will not be renewed when it expires in 2023.
This led competitors such as quantitative dream and Ubisoft to announce their own large-scale Star Wars game projects. Yidian also revealed last week that the company will terminate a 10-year exclusive agreement similar to FIFA and will rename its football game from 2023 instead of using words such as FIFA.
No matter what the future of EA is, the big problem facing the sale or merger is how it will ultimately affect the employees of these companies. Art power recently reported a profit again, but it is estimated that 200 customer service staff have been eliminated. According to four affected employees, their work is being outsourced to cheaper third-party suppliers such as Romania and India.
Apple has a long history of acquisitions, partly to increase its staff and intellectual property reserves, and partly to enter new markets faster.
Although Apple has gradually entered the game field, such as by subscribing to Apple arade, analysts believe that it seems unlikely to make such an acquisition. Apple's most notable acquisition was the $3 billion acquisition of beats music and beats electronics in 2014.
Comcast, Disney and apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment.