Electronic Arts Up For Sale

[marrr]

The word is out in the Wall Street Journal that videogame publishing giant Electronic Arts is exploring to sell as the company faces struggles in the online and offline markets.
The company's stock has faced a strong downturn over the past year with the underwhelming sales and overwhelming failure of Star Wars: The Old Republic and other setbacks, which have not only hurt the company's reputation as a world class publisher, but have lost the love of fans of the Star Wars offshoot.
WSJ reports that EA has been approached by a couple of private-equity companies KKR and Providence Equity Partners about a potential sale of the company. The paper also reports that in light of the news, company stocks rose by 17% to $15.25 but are down by an overall 36% this year.
Whether there is any veracity to the claims remains to be seen. It's amusing to note that it was only a few years ago that EA itself had announced plans to purchase the then-flagging Take Two Interactive, which has since rebounded thanks to the popularity of the Grand Theft Auto series and other Rockstar titles.

Electronic Arts Up For Sale

[1up_dave]

WOOOOOOOHHHOOOOOO!!!!

They can only go up from here. I hope somebody who knows what they're doing picks them up.

[THaNaToS_J2]

I almost shed a tear. Almost. How's your overly aggressive DRM model working for you?

[blAAAm!!!]

they can eat a bag of dicks on the way down

[KillingUSoftly]

Wow I'm sad... HELLO COD!!!

[Ecip]

maybe i'll buy BF4 after all? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......... maybe.

[Whoami]

Only if the "new company" dumps origin and crawls back to Steam.

maybe i'll buy BF4 after all? hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......... maybe.

[Deemnath88]

Yea, can't get much worse, should only get better
Wonder what changes will be made....

[Six]

As long as DICE keeps battlefield I could care less what happens to EA. EA has been making some shitty decisions.

Charge people 60$ for BF3, then if you don't by the game til a year later it costs 30$+15$+15$ for expansions, then a couple months later release premium that gives u a Queue benefit over regular players (degrading those without premium): and in premium the 30$ people spent on expansions goes down the toilet because ud have got it anyway. So they milked 120$ out of people who could have just paid 90. THEENNNNN a few months later, release the whole damn package, premium and full game.. for 60$...

I luckily had only bought the limited edition for 50$. And then I got premium. so 110$ total they milked me for.. I'd say its worth it when the other expansions come out. But there is a few people out there who paid 50$ for single game, 15 for expansion, 15 for expansion, then 60 for premium... and that would suck.

Origin is just now improving a little bit atleast though. It runs way better and the new steam layout for it is much nicer.

[Echo136]

Im a tad worried honestly. EA is notorious for shutting down game servers. If EA sells out, whats gonna happen to all those multiplayer and DRM authentication servers?

[1up_dave]

What happens is, no one else continues to rely on one huge mega-company to control game servers.

Or at least that's what happens in every gamer's dream.

[Echo136]

What happens is, no one else continues to rely on one huge mega-company to control game servers.

Or at least that's what happens in every gamer's dream.

Except Activision, Ubisoft, THQ, and plenty of others. :-/

[R3TRI8UTI0N]

To be honest, I think forcing users to use Origin really hurt their profits from BF3. If they put it up on steam as well... They would be much better off. They just need to stop acting like the BigBoss and actually listen to their players. We give them their jobs. But hell, if someone wants to takeover that hell pit, go right ahead.

[kempodude]

Woohoo!

[Echo136]

To be honest, I think forcing users to use Origin really hurt their profits from BF3. If they put it up on steam as well... They would be much better off. They just need to stop acting like the BigBoss and actually listen to their players. We give them their jobs. But hell, if someone wants to takeover that hell pit, go right ahead.

More often people are being forced to use STEAM for games and it isnt hurting profits. The problem they are having is their products are not consumer friendly.