Disney Eyeing EA?

[wraggster]

EA spent much of 2008 pursuing an acquisition of Take-Two Interactive, but will EA become the hunted in 2009? That's the speculation that is flying after the "Heard on the Street" column in Wednesday's edition of The Wall Street Journal speculated that the Walt Disney Company might be preparing to bid on EA.

The column comes after Disney CFO Tom Skaggs said a "strategic and attractive" purchase could be a possibility rather than developing more in-house games. Financial sites such as The Motley Fool jumped on the speculation. EA's stock is certainly low enough to be attractive; it closed on Thursday at $17, slightly above its 52-week low of $15.50. EA's 52-week high was $60.35. The company currently has a market capitalization of under $6 billion.

While there are certainly strategic aspects of the deal that would make sense (EA works closely with Disney's ESPN on many sports games), it does bring up interesting questions. Would there be a culture class between Disney and EA? Does Disney understand the videogame market? Would this spur other major conglomerates in a bidding war for EA? 2009 could be very interesting, indeed.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/937/937870p1.html

[osgeld]

i think the author is really out of the loop concerning "moderen" (like since the 70') disney

disney is a conglomerate, end of story, there is no clash, they could litterly be producing nc17 films (and lets be honest touchstone gets pretty close) and as long as it does not open with a doofy mouse, a suggestive faerie and a magical castle there is no problem

its like mircrosoft selling software on the mac, or even the c64 which they have always done, its only waaaaaaay after the fact that some tight hole gets all upset about it (what? my c128 has microsoft basic on it, unholy hell! yea so did your 64 and your vic 20, shadap)

[apex05]

With the constant sequels and developer deadlines EA's quality control has gone down the s****er so putting the Disney name in there could be a good thing if brand image is important to them, But if it's purely a business thing then all those Disney and EA execs could be expecting some bigger bonuses.. and those smaller developers they own could be in for even more work and less creativity