Nexon Looking to Buy Electronic Arts?
Yahoo! Finance informs us that, according to Bloomberg News, Japanese gaming giant Nexon has made an offer to buy Electronic Arts.
Electronic Arts gained 4.5 percent to $15.69 at 9:39 a.m. in New York, after earlier increasing 5.3 percent for the biggest jump since March 8. The Redwood City, California-based company’s shares have tumbled 27 percent this year before today.
Nexon, the Tokyo-based video-game maker, has contacted Electronic Arts, Maeil Business said, citing unidentified industry officials.
Nexon is in talks to buy smartphone and mobile-game developers, Chief Financial Officer Owen Mahoney said in an interview this month. Nexon announced two investments in game companies in the past two months.
Nexon is probably best known, to North American gamers at least, for Maple Story, a 2D side-scrolling MMORPG. Both EA and Nexon have, per their corporate policies, declined to comment on the rumours.
That would be crazy, and I suspect bad. Nothing like an unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy on top of a million existing ones to spur innovation. What’s funny is that EA’s stock went up while Nexon’s went down. Probably not related to the rumor, but still interesting. Now if only Square and Enix would merge, RPGs would be so awesome we’d be beside ourselves. Shit… Nevermind.
Yeah, I don’t think it would be good. Besides more bureaucracy, I could see a buyer wanting to cut out a lot of the little games and projects, and just focus on the most profitable ones. That would spell doom for Warhammer Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Ultima Online, and any other Ultima-related projects.
I had that thought too, initially…but then I thought that Nexon’s whole raison d’etre is online games of exactly the sort Mythic cranks out and/or is rumoured to be working on. And I thought: you know, I’d be less worried about those projects, and more about projects like Dragon Age 3.
Good games are a little like World Series wins. Few and far between (per franchise), one every year, and the usual suspects incessantly vying for them. Sorta like published music, books, or any other commodity. Anyway, what’s up with DA3? Are all the dragons dead except the ones you must nurse back to health and then OHS NOES! Dragons, flying and biting. They quickly learn to claw at one’s neck to bring one down. Bastards can’t identify foe from friendly. Shoot her, Iolo, SHOOT HER!!!
I’m a little confused at how it could have the money to buy EA…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexon_Co._Ltd.
Revenue: 1.12 billion
Operating Income: 492.86 million
Net Income: 331.87 million
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/3659:JP/balance-sheet
note: figures there in JPY, so divide by 80.7884957 for USD amount
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Arts
Revenue: 3.589 billion
Operating Income: 312 million
Net Income: 276 million
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/EA:US/balance-sheet