EA Squashes Rumours of Acquisition, Will Remain Independent

Acquired by whom? The Devil? Oh wait, he already owns EA.

As much as I dislike EA and think they ruin many franchises, they are also home to some of my favorites (Dead Space, Battlefield, Crysis, Titanfall & SW Batttlefront). No denying they have some great games. I just wonder if someone else owning them would be better for their franchises or not. Hard to say, really.

EA I always figured would be a long shot. Nonetheless I'm happy to hear they will remain independent. It's Ubisoft I'm most worried about though. I remember they gave a statement not too long ago that read like "We will definitely listen to ANY offers! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge". I hope the Activision deal is as far as this acquisition spike goes for at least a little while.

"will become the "largest standalone independent developer and publisher of interactive entertainment in the world" well thats quite a grim thought.

Good news. I’m not particularly fond of EA but if someone was to acquire them today it’d be the likes of Tencent. And if EA could get any worse, that’d be it, to be snapped up by Tencent.

If you think about it when and if the blizzard acquisition goes through the next biggest multiplayer fps will be battlefield and ea could then gain a lot of new player= profit. They definitely will be in a great position and even rival cod after they lose the ps player base.

@Arisen Have you seen the absolute state of Battlefield recently? Also Cod will still be coming to PlayStation.

Microsoft would have them by the end of the year watch.

How is @nessisonet not in the first 10 comments?!

@Fenbops Yeah, I doubt Microsoft will remove CoD from PS any time soon. The revenue stream is probably nothing to scoff at!

It’s probably going to take some time for EA to rebuild Battlefield’s reputation.

This is great news

I never thought they would be bought. They dont need tech or money, so why would they?

They ARE the devil, ive seen it first hand whilst working for them. Time and time again Ive seen them buy up creative teams and squash that creativity and life out of them till the teams die. Its happened so often now that a list of them here would make the post too long! Obviously the one that hurts most to me was Bullfrog - why buy a quirky creative british team and then stop them making what they are good at... Smh.

@hi_drnick
He's on his lunch break.

@Fenbops I mean, it has gotten better.
All it really needs are more maps and weapons, but the core gameplay definitely improved with the changes they've made.

if they loose the NFL licence or Fifa drops off after losing the naming rights EA are screwed

A few years ago when EA were often awarded the 'worst' company in the world, then they were perhaps most likely to be bought up. Since then, they do seem to have 'improved' as others 'deteriorated'. EA Play seems to be part of that stabilising and their future too.

A/B have been 'falling' further and further - eventually putting all their eggs in one basket (CoD) and with CoD not as 'popular' or as 'Lucrative' as it once was, it has a major impact on their future. A LOT of great IP assets and no plans, no staff etc to capitalise as CoD 'needs' to release annually to fund next years CoD so all staff are 'required' for CoD.

EA at least releases multiple games most years, not putting ALL their eggs in one Fifa, Madden or Battlefield basket, have some 'big' franchise licensed titles like Star Wars too and have a decent future plan too to cope with a rapidly changing market place. In their position, they are better off making strategic partnership deals - like EA Play with Game Pass Ultimate than selling up to another Publisher - whether they have their own platform or not. Of course, things can change in this rapidly changing world and maybe there will come a time to sell up, but I think they are in a 'strong' position (which makes their Price 'higher') than a few other Publishers - like Ubisoft, Square Enix etc. There are a LOT of Publishers so competition is still high and a lot of independent Studio's too for those Publishers too expand as well.

MS/Sony/Nintendo are not likely to buy Embracer, TenCent, TakeTwo etc. Capcom, Bandai Namco and Sega also exist and there are countless devs around the world making 'independent' games so I doubt there will come a time when 'Sony' (for example and as this is a Sony based site) has NO games other than the 'few' they can make and/or Publish themselves because MS bought A/B and EA. Even if they added Ubisoft too, Sony would still get WB, Embracer, Square Enix, Capcom, Sega, Bandai Namco, TakeTwo etc and ALL the independent multi-platform games too.

A/B of late only release approx 1 game a year and that's likely to continue on Sony too. MS won't split up the Warzone/MP player base - just like they won't split up ESO, Fallout76, Minecraft etc established 'online' communities.

I almost expect Warzone to 'integrate' the Multi-player suite into it so it becomes Free to Play with 'paid for' seasons, maybe even a paid for competitive seasonal league - F2P being completely free and no Skill Based Matchmaking.

I also expect that 'one' studio, whether its Infinity Ward, Treyarch, Raven etc or a 'newly' created studio made up of staff from Activisions studios to work exclusively on CoD - like 343 make Halo or the Coalition is Gears. The other studios will be set up to make their 'own' games and have their 'own' identity, own culture etc - like ALL of MS's other studios. Arkane, Bethesda, id Software, Tango, Double Fine, Ninja Theory etc all have their own identity that permeates through their games and I expect the same from A/B studios once MS takes over and 'organises' them...

Battlefield 2042 completely flopped and they lose the FIFA license next year. Doesn't sound like a strong position to me.

In other words, no one wanted to buy them with the terms offered.

@Grumblevolcano BF 'flopped' based on previous sales and player numbers, but it was still a 'financial' success. It hasn't lost EA a LOT of money, they may of 'expected' a higher profit margin, but it was still profitable.

Losing Fifa may well have a knock on effect to their overall sales but again, that depends on what impact the 'loss' of the licence has. They may lose 'Fifa World/European cups' but can negotiate with UEFA, FA, EPL, Ligue 1, SPL etc and even individual teams to have their teams, their players etc so losing 'Fifa' may not be too impactful. They may lose some sales but offset that by not having to pay Fifa's ridiculous License fee, can offset that by releasing more 'football' games - street football, arcade football, variations on the 'rules' etc and gain more in sales than they lost on 'Fifa 24'...

The difference is that if those 2 weren't 'profitable' at all, they still have numerous other projects that are successful. Madden will still sell, NBA still sells, Star Wars games will sell and they get money every month from Game Pass Ultimate, EA play/access subscriptions.

If CoD flops, where does that leave Activision? All their studios are working on CoD so if the player count is 'poor', there is little income coming in every month, no-one buying MTX, Season Pass etc so where is the money coming in for 'next' years CoD? If they can't encourage people back, they are screwed...

If BF2042 flops, then Fifa23 with its legends will more than help offset losses. Madden, NBA and whatever other sports games will certainly bring in revenue and they have other games in the works - Star Wars, Mass Effect, Dragon Age etc. Its a stronger position to be in...

‘I don't think we could be in a stronger position’ is a weird thing to say. They can always be in a stronger position. 🤔

I'm ok with this. It means Mass Effect will remain on PS5 as well as Xbox and PC.

Strong position after not having a single release this year other than their annual entries and after the debacle of Battlefield 2042? Sure, such a strong position…

They asked for a premium price that no one was willing to pay, but I do think that eventually when the Activision deal is closed Microsoft will at least attempt to acquire EA, in fact, if the Activision scandals didn’t drop their share price significantly Microsoft would’ve acquired EA instead.

@BAMozzy The FIFA situation is all about branding, there'll be plenty of people who don't pick up EA Sports FC solely because it's not FIFA rather than changes to the actual game. Honestly given how risky the move was, I could see EA Sports FC being FTP live service much like eFootball.

The Game Pass deal and Star Wars does give EA a bit of a safety net but I wouldn't be surprised if the Game Pass deal was created with the intention of acquiring later.

@Fenbops I've never even played a battlefield it's not my thing. The online hate it receives is nothing new for EA. Or Ubisoft. Or Activision- blizzard. Or Bethesda. Or Konami. There's a pattern of constant hate in the community and I just don't care to bother anymore.

@Pat_trick LMAO.....LOL.. OH MY GAWD.... DUDE THIS IS THE COMMENT OF THE YEAR FOR THIS YEAR....

EA were never going to be bought by anyone...... how do you buy anything the DEVIL owns..........

@Arisen ....100% correct..... it seems they knew ACT/B was pn sale and i think they deliberately announced they being open to sale or partnership 5o make ACT/B think that EA is also in trouble so that ACT/B don't pull out of the deal.

This will knoff COD off the #1 FPS SHOOTER spot and it will creat a void on PS which Battlefield and Destiny will fill and may have a knock on effect o PC too.

Actually if you think about.... if COD goes XBOX only it will actuality hurt the franchise and may actually kill it off........

XBOX/MICROSOFT have not been able to put back HALO to the deity status it was on when BUNGIE was in charge of it.

@BAMozzy ...... The state and status of HALO and GEARS OF WAR shows that both 343 Industries and Coalition are not interested in working on both franchises. Remember COD currently occupies the postion that was occupied by HALO i.e. THE # FPS SHOOTER......before COD everyone wanted to makea 'HALO KILLER' until Bungir decided to part with MS and A/B finally toppled HALO. So now since Bungie left XBOX HALI has fallen so far from its perch thaf it only lives on reputation alone to the point that XBOX had buy out the company that dethroned their game......

So actually this XBOX acquisition is bad for both A/B and COD

@Grumblevolcano ......since from FIFA 08 OR 09 EA's football game has been nothing but FUT and some offline modes. So essetially EA football game has been an online/multiplayer/F2P game that does no need anything FIFA marking branding to sell. i.e. people who buy EA's Fifa don't buy it for football or football related reasons. People buy fifa for FUt, the FIFA esports tournaments for the prize money and the rest buy it or play it because their friends play or buy it. This is not gpimg to be changed by any branding.

So if people bought football games for football or football related reasons then PES will be topping the charts but no one buys that game hence even KONAMI decided to make it a F2P game.

So EA SPORTS CLUB 23 OR whatever it will be wull still be topping charts next year and still printing money from FUT packs anf mtx

@GREGORIAN 343 I will grant you haven't exactly taken Halo forwards and upwards - but I will say, Halo: Infinite is the 'best' and closest to the original Halo that defined the Console Shooter. CoD borrows from Halo (as do many others) and its still 'popular' today with over 20m players in its first week alone...

MS also owns Doom and Wolfenstein - as well as Quake. Adding CoD makes sense as it was the Marketing and Partnership between A/B and MS that made CoD popular. Throughout the 360 era and into the next gen, CoD was linked with Xbox and now its coming 'home'.

As for the Coalition, there is nothing to indicate they don't want to make Gears - they are supposedly working on Gears 6, used Gears assets on their 'UE5' demo (at least the Character model was) and their Studio name, just like 343's, was taken from their franchises. They 'can' work on other projects too, branch out in terms of Game Play - they made Gears Tactics (Xcom-like) for example and 343 have made Halo Wars (RTS).

Game Pass allows for Studio experimentation, for 'small' teams within those studio's to work on projects (like Pentiment or Grounded by Obsidian) and to put them straight into Game Pass. If the Coalition want to make something else, other than Gears, they can, but I bet a large part of the Studio are working on Gears 6 too...

Halo may have 'fallen', but then so has Battlefield, Overwatch and CoD. Games like Killzone, Resistance, Titanfall etc have all gone too but some of that could also be down to the rise of F2P games like Fortnite, PUBG, Apex Legends, Valorant, Warframe etc and of course Warzone which has taken a LOT of those players away from those 'paid for' Games. In general, the FPS isn't as popular today as it was during the 360/PS3 era and it seems that 'Open World' action adventure games are most popular.

My point still stands and your 'bias' and unsubstantiated claims do nothing to change that. Regardless of whether CoD goes 'exclusive' to Xbox - meaning it will still be available on virtually 'every' device (except PS/Switch - but its not on Switch anyway now) because it will be playable on Mobiles, PC, Xbox Consoles, TV apps, Laptops, Tablets, Steam Decks etc - if it has a screen and wifi connection, chances are you can play ANY Xbox Exclusive and probably own a device already to play on as almost everyone has an android/iOS smartphone!

@Grumblevolcano I'm sure there will be some that won't buy it now because of that 'lack of' Fifa branding - but I also bet a LARGE portion of the current players will buy it because its the same 'game-play' and feel of previous games and if it does have the majority of teams as they claim, then the Fifa branding won't matter.

People will know that its 'Fifa' without the Fifa brand, but like I said, they can get other licenses - like UEFA, FA, EPL, Ligue 1 etc. Like they said, not renewing (apart from the ridiculously high licensing fee and numerous issues that has had with players, teams etc), they can also be more creative, offer more variations (5-a-side, indoor 'legends', beach/park/street football etc etc) which may bring in 'new' players who want a more 'arcade' or 'fun' version instead of the more 'sim' like Fifa...

@BAMozzy ...... Not sure what u mean by my bias .....

But Mobile does not bring the MTX money on PC and CONSOLE.

FPS is still popular hence people still asking for Half Lyfe Alyx to be on PSVR.

What is no longer populae is TABLETS, Do tech companies still make those except for Apple?

TV software and TV apps are like HD DVD they never took off as anticipated.

Most people buy laptops for work and very seldomly for gaming.

Maybe Steam deck with Valve trying to go after Nintendo's HYBRID MOBILE CONSOLE market after everybody failed to outsell PSVR. This is another indication of the POWER OF THE PLAYSTATION PLAYER BASE. Nothing happens in Blockbuster gaming without PlayStation having a say in it. Virtual Reality is now going to really kick off and take a proper hold once PSVR2 launches and not at any other time. Even Half Life VR could not save all PC VR headsets.

So XBox's play anywhere push seems to be misplaced like the Kinect and DRM.

As for Mobile:
Also just because a person has a smart phone does not mean you automatically are able to play anygame anywhere as right now u cannot play PES on any device that does not have a minimum of 4GB ram even though KONAMI said the game requires 2GB minimum and the game uses UNREAL engine which EPIC claim it is quality scalable but actual live test disprove that claim. So a 4gb ram phone is a premium phone so only premium phone buys can atleast at minimum access XBOX on their mobile and premium phone means 'any device anywhere' is a lie. Even the WITCHER GWENT MOBILE does not work on any non premium phone i.e. minimum 4GB ram.

So anything exclusive to XBOX ecosystem is not mutliplaform and is not available anywherr on any device. That is a huge number of people they are losing out on just on mobile and if u are not on PS they u might as well be dead except for PC.

So all A/B games u mention will die if XBOX make them exclusive.

So really the A/B deal is a loss to both XBOX and A/B if it becomes exclusive to XBOX.

It is the same fate faced by every XBOX exclusive game including Starfield. E.g. if ORI games were multiplatform i.e. available on PS they would have been smash hit ala Rocket League and Fall Guys.

@GREGORIAN With streaming, you can play any of those games, anywhere and because it's on Game Pass, you need to have a Game Pass subscription.

With that, you can play on 'any' browser or device that is 'compatible'. As the game is actually running on 'Virtual' Series X hardware in the cloud and streamed directly to whatever device you have a 'decent' internet/wi-fi connection.

You can play Halo, FH5, MSFS - all XBOX owned games as well as a 'few' from 3rd Parties too, on any device and anywhere you have a decent wifi/internet connection. The games run 'in the cloud'. The point is you can play on many more platforms than just the Console. You don't have to buy an Xbox at all to play Xbox games which means their games are already playable on devices you own. It might not be able to play the games 'offline' or 'locally', but you can still play.

A LOT of games are considered 'multi-platform' yet don't release on Nintendo Switch or Mobiles and you need a 'beefy gaming' Laptop/PC to play or the PS5/Series consoles - that's a 'limited' selection of Platforms and certainly more than '1' so 'multi-platform'

Xbox is a 'multi-platform' brand as its the 'brand name' for ALL of Microsoft's Gaming division which includes Cloud, Console & PC platforms. As a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, I can play Xbox games on my Console, On my Samsung Mobile or on my Gaming Laptop, keep my progress across ALL platforms, don't need to buy 'different platform' versions - I get the 'Cloud' version on Mobile, PC version on Laptop and Series X version on my Console and it keeps my progress across all....

Exclusive to 'Xbox' doesn't mean that you 'have to buy a Microsoft Console' to play the 'latest' games. You can play those on Multiple Devices, Multiple Platforms etc - if what you 'already' have doesn't give you the 'experience' you want, they have a few options of their own to suit your budget, situation and/or preference - their Series S or X Console. If MS had their way, they'd want you to be able to access Game Pass on Switch/PS consoles too - which of course would bring them into the Xbox ecosystem with a subscription fee entry of course...

Exclusive to Xbox is not a 'big' deal when its still a multi-platform brand so will still be available to many, and CoD doesn't release on Switch or on Mobile so 'losing' Playstation but gaining with Cloud based options, Play CoD on Mobile at 60fps because its running in the cloud, play it on your brand new Samsung TV without needing to buy 'hardware', specs not good enough on your PC/XB1's to run the game, stream it. So even if it only gets a 'physical' PC/Series X release, its still available on MANY more platforms/devices etc thanks to Cloud! The entry fee can be as little as $10 a month if you already have access to Xbox Cloud games on your device, and funnily enough, they also have fortnite for free too...

I can't remember the last rime I played an EA game. I really could not care if they were scooped up by a console manufacturer.