Valleywag
acquisitions
Posts Tagged “
Electronic Arts
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EA won't take no for an answer
Electronic Arts once again extended its $2 billion offer to buy Take-Two, the makers of Grand Theft Auto. Once again, Take-Two said no. "Their proposal still significantly undervalues Take-Two," said chairman Strauss Zelnick in a statement. [Reuters]
Electronic Arts once again extended its $2 billion offer to buy Take-Two, the makers of Grand Theft Auto. Once again, Take-Two said no. "Their proposal still significantly undervalues Take-Two," said chairman Strauss Zelnick in a statement. [Reuters]
acquisitions
jackpot
Shawn Fanning might never have to pitch Volkswagens again
Finally, Napster creator Shawn Fanning will make a little bank. After Napster went bankrupt and he sold Snocap to Imeem for not much at all, Fanning and cofounder Jon Baudanza have sold social network startup Rupture to Electronic Arts for $30 million. The best part: Fanning and Baudanza did it without launching a product out of beta. All Rupture ever built was a still-in-beta network for World of Warcraft gamers. Investors cashing in on the Volkswagen pitchman's payday (see video) include Ron Conway, Joi Ito, Reid Hoffman, and Baseline Ventures.
Recently released EA Land virtual world already shuttered
In an attempt to rebrand The Sims Online, Electronic Arts renamed their massively multiplayer online doohickey EA Land. Now the site redirects to the project blog, which laments but does not explain the closure. [News.com]
In an attempt to rebrand The Sims Online, Electronic Arts renamed their massively multiplayer online doohickey EA Land. Now the site redirects to the project blog, which laments but does not explain the closure. [News.com]
exits
Ad sales VP leaves Yahoo for Electronic Arts
Yahoo VP Elizabeth Harz has left the company to become SVP of global ad sales at videogame publisher Electronic Arts. At Yahoo, she was most recently in charge of poring over marketing data — the kind of background that will be invaluable to EA as the company develops advertising strategies for casual games on sites like Pogo.com and mobile devices. And in the wake of Jerry Yang's announcement that the new AMP brand advertising platform will be ready to go by the third quarter, it sounds like more bad news for Yahoo. Even if the code works, you need people to bring in customers.
Welcome back, now go buy Take-Two
Electronic Arts has hired Eric Brown, an EA veteran, back from McAfee as CFO to replace the abruptly departing Warren Jenson. This comes as the company is trying to buy rival Take-Two Interactive. [WSJ]
Electronic Arts has hired Eric Brown, an EA veteran, back from McAfee as CFO to replace the abruptly departing Warren Jenson. This comes as the company is trying to buy rival Take-Two Interactive. [WSJ]
great moments in journalism
CNET reporter, still employed for time being, asks EA and Take-Two to stop fighting in public
Industrial-sized video game publisher Electronic Arts is in negotations to buy the only real competitor in the sports game market Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two's shareholders want more than EA is offering and may be stalling until the release of the latest Grand Theft Auto installment. The two companies have taken their negotiations public by issuing dueling press releases — and CNET reporter Daniel Terdiman is tiring of it.Get your highly-paid keisters into a meeting room. Order some takeout. Lock the doors. And work this out yourselves.With all due respect to Terdiman, Valleywag loves it when companies air their grievances in public. It's like hip-hop MCs exchanging dis rhymes, but with less rhythm and poetry! So to everyone on the EA and Take-Two negotiating teams, feel free to send us anonymous tips and call each other the dirty, backstabbing double-dealers you know you want to. (Photo by AP/Paul Sakuma)
electronic arts
EA CFO quits even as Goldman predicts his company's Take-Two acquisition will go through
Electronics Arts CFO Warren Jenson has unexpectedly quit the company, public filings revealed yesterday. He'll continue to cash a $595,000-a-year salary through September 30, unless he lands a new job first, the FT reports. Jenson's abrupt departure comes as EA pursues an increasingly hostile bid to acquire rival videogame maker Take-Two Interactive. The bid, which Goldman Sachs analyst Mark Wienkes today predicted would end up successful, was largely CEO John Riccitiello's project, according to the AP.
electronic arts
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello gets hostile with Take-Two
Rejected by Take-Two management, Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello will take his bid to acquire the rival videogame maker straight to its shareholders, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's not quite the kind of violent carjacking you'd see in Take-Two's Grand Theft Auto, but that's how we'd like to imagine it, OK? EA has told shareholders it will buy outstanding Take-Two shares for $26 each. That's the same price Riccitiello offered last month, when it was a 50 percent premium over Take-Two's share price.
iphone
Jesusphone getting God game Spore
It's fitting; the Second Coming of the phone will get a game from On High. Alongside Apple's SDK demo today, Electronic Arts' Travis Boatman showed off a version of Will Wright's magnum opus Spore running on the iPhone. The release date hasn't been finalized, but the hope is it will coincide with the game's multi-platform release this September. That BART ride just got a helluva lot more interesting. More »
acquisitions
Electronic Arts' Take-Two takeover made simple: It's about sports and cars
Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello isn't content to sit idly by twiddling his thumbs until retirement. He'd rather spend as much as possible to keep his company relevant to the vanishing-attention-span generation of males whose spending pads his pension. They're interested in fast cars and sports — which makes Riccitiello keenly interested in EA rival Take-Two. Riccitiello has placed a $2 billion bid on Take-Two Interactive, the notorious publisher of the Grand Theft Auto series. More »
electronic arts
John Riccitiello should just get himself fired
Curious: It's in Electronics Arts CEO John Riccitiello's best interest to get the company's board replaced, or the company sold. If only he were working at Yahoo, Microsoft would have a much easier time of things. EA has penned a "Key Employee Continuity Plan," a nice little safety net for its executives. If Riccitiello is fired without cause after a change in corporate control, he would receive $2.3 million. And 18 months of health coverage. God knows insurance can be expensive. More »
Tetris owners willnotlike Iminlikewithyou founder
Charles Forman is currently building Blockles, a surprisingly Tetris-like online game for his dating site, Iminlikewithyou. Why do we suspect he's not going to be making any friends at Tetris owner Electronic Arts?
Charles Forman is currently building Blockles, a surprisingly Tetris-like online game for his dating site, Iminlikewithyou. Why do we suspect he's not going to be making any friends at Tetris owner Electronic Arts?
videogames
Electronic Arts shuts down EA Chicago
Electronic Arts is up to some serious fall cleaning. Today an internal memo from EA Games president Frank Gibeau revealed that EA's Chicago studio will be shut down. This is shortly after Electronic Arts posted its second-quarter revenues, which fell 18 percent to $640 million — and just a year after it opened the studio, which was responsible for the Fight Night franchise. This is just the latest in a series of cutbacks. More »
rumormonger
Electronic Arts boss to clean house
A leaked internal email indicates that the videogame behemoth Electronic Arts is vying to slash staff. The first of EA's studios CEO John Riccitiello will slash are Mythic and EA Redwood Shores. The email issued to Mythic employees says it will trim down through "attrition, performance management, stricter hiring guidelines and layoffs." Apparently, EA has started handing out pink slips, with more to follow. Would this have anything to do with EA's grand $860 million acquisition of BioWare and Pandemic Studios? Riccitiello spearheaded the purchase of both in 2005 when he was at private-equity firm Elevation Partners. What a lovely modus operandi: Profit today, screw people out of their jobs tomorrow.
Electronic Arts wants one console to rule them all. Every few years there's a "console war" in which hardware manufacturers, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony, bring new wares to market and upset the status quo. Electronic Arts is calling for an end to the madness. Why? It's too expensive to develop titles for multiple platforms. Instead, the company's executives are pushing a one-platform future in which, like CD and DVD players, anyone can manufacture a game console on which all games will play. Of course, EA — the Google of the videogame world — could easily make that happen by only publishing games for the PC. [BBC]
videogames
Electronic Arts only wishes it were big in Japan
Videogame maker Electronic Arts is on the prowl for an acquisition in Japan to act as an Asiatic beachhead. Only 6 percent of its sales come from Asia, which seems absurdly low, considering the continent is home to the most popular videogame consoles, and well, only, say, most of the world's population. How long, exactly, has it taken EA to notice this fact? Granted it has subsisted, primarily, on the sales of steroidal sports games and World War II shooters that don't exactly mesh with the Japanese diet of saucy role-playing games, but it's shocking that a monolith of the gaming industry has such a rocky foothold in that territory — and that's it's taken the company this long to do something about it.
Electronic Arts is jumping into the ad-supported videogame field with a new title called Game Show. The free sports-trivia game is launching in October. Videogame publishers have been experimenting with the free-to-play business model as an alternative to the traditional model of charging for games, but EA's move is one of the biggest yet. [GameDaily Biz]
