The gaming industry has seen a lot of mergers and acquisitions, especially in the last three years. The merger of Vivendi Games and Activision has sent shockwaves through the gaming industry. Now GamesIndustry.biz is reporting that Electronic Arts is not ruling out further developer acquisitions. EA also mentioned that there are no hostile takeovers. It has to work right for both the parties that are involved.
Nick Button-Brown is the director of business development from EA Partners told GamesIndustry.biz, “It’s always possible. My primary aim is to find new IP and work with great developers whether we acquire them or not. It would have to work for both parties. There are no hostile takeovers, it has to be right. Look at Bizarre being bought by Activision. Bizarre were independent for so many years but then they felt like they wanted a little bit of shelter and it fitted. If we’d have been working with Bizarre that would have been an interesting deal.”
Button-Brown was at the GDC Lyon and spoke on quite a few topics. He also indicated that Vivendi was drifting and that’s why they needed to change. Nick Button-Brown feels that all this is very interesting and is unclear how it is going to go until the next six months after it settles down.