This comes up every now and again.

EA CANNOT BE A FIRST PARTY DEVELOPER!

The majority of EA's licensed games (all their sports games for example) are licensed to them with the term that they must publish them on "all viable platforms" If MS bought EA, they would either have to give up all their IP, or continue to make games for the PS3, Wii, DS, Iphone, PSP. Hardly ideal for a purchase.

no, they would just need to make them timed exclusive for xbox platforms and PCs which would kill other consoles. 4-6 month exclusivity for all EA games would kill sales of sonys and nintendos home consoles since MS would pretty much own North America and Others market.

Making HD games is a risky business. They limit their liabilities by paying for games they feel can improve their HW and SW sales without risking large losses. The timed exclusives and money spent on multi-plat deals will never produce unforseeable losses at years end. Buying EA would mean every penny they have made this gen and more. 4-5 Billion? BW alone was 680m when EA bought them. Have EA had a year in the black this gen? Natal is risky enough.

At a guess, although I don't have the exact terms and conditions, the team of incredibly highly paid lawyers representing the major sporting affiliations have thought of this already and put in terms to stop it. I do not think EA can do this without being in breech of contract. 

A madden game made by activision would sell exactly as much as one made by EA

A brandless football game by EA would sell a small fraction of a Madden game by EA

That should tell you who has the power in this bargain

outsource EA Sports. Problem solved, gg no re.

exclusive Dead Space, Battlefield, MoH, Mirrors Edge wouldn't be that bad either.

The simple fact is buying a developer doesn't buy you the staff, whenever a huge takeover occurs in the game development arena staff get worried about their jobs, and what conditions will be like working under new employers. When this sort of atmosphere kicks in people jump ship and leave for different pastures where they can negotiate on their own terms. Buying a developer is rarely a better solution than outsourcing the work to them.

If you want to whine about the first party situation Microsoft are in then the answer is for them to build their own studios by poaching the best staff rather than trying to wholesale buy a developer. Looking at the 360 exclusive line up this year, I really don't think Microsoft have a huge problem in all honesty.

even if it's true EA still have many sport series where they wouldn't have any problem in making them exclusive(Tiger Woods and all those junior basketball/american football thingy) and if they would give exclusive content to MS with all the other games it would still kill other consoles and ms wouldn't even have to pay for whole EA - they would have to make an exclusivity/timed exclusivity deal for all the titles released in certain period of time.

imagine series like EA Sports MMA/Fight Night, Need For Speed, Rock Band, Skate, Medal of Honor, Battlefield, Burnout, Dragon Age, Dead Space and all the other titles going to just one platform while every sports game getting superior version on one that console. no matter what sony/nintendo would do people will follow those series. seriously Sims 4 being exclusive for one home console? that's 10+mln consoles sold to casual gamers alone.

This.  There is a lot of talent churn when purchasing a studio.  The one left over is rarely the same as the one purchased.

It is wise to buy a developer when it owns some IPs. But when it doesn't it is better to hire people and create a new studio like Firebird Studios or 343 Studios.

I wonder what is Firebird Studios working on. They have some impressive staff at their disposal.

They disbanded Ensemble before Halo Wars was even released. They basically got rid of all PC-centric studios plus a few others that weren't bringing in much profit for the development costs.

Ensemble expanded for a range of titles beyond the usual RTS "Age of... " they were famous for but those titles were cancelled by Microsoft. They even had an MMO in the works. Anyway, they expanded for those titles but when they were cancelled they maintained the staff, so they had high costs and had only produced RTS games (PC centric) with not a lot of diversity. It was for these reasons that Microsoft had them disbanded even though they had produced a 20 million+ selling franchise in the "Age of... " RTS games. Shame really.