unfortunately i cant change it, possibly something mods could look at?

IIRC Micrsoft bought Nintendo's share for $400,000,000 meaning the entire company cost them (roughly) $1 Billion ... It doesn't really matter though, my point was that Rare was expensive and took 4 years to deliver above-average games

It appears that the company is valued at around 2 billion. I am not sure who would want to buy them considering they have so many legal problems...

That's an easy one ... This is (pretty much) the only console generation where there has not been a new company producing a console, if Apple, Walmart or Imperial Oil decided they wanted to make a game console it would make sense to buy 4 or 5 publishers Take-Two's size to create your First party developers ... On the other hand, I suspect that if you broke up the studios and paired them with various licences (Rock Star North with Grand Theft Auto, Rockstar San Diego with Midnight Club, etc.) you could make a profit by selling all of the small studios; Microsoft (as an example) might be willing to spend hundreds of millions (or Billions) of dollars in order to ensure that Grand Theft Auto was exclusive ...

I can see it being easier to sale that way.

Another problem with buyouts is the danger of losing the talent. Despite earning great franchises a big reason to purchase a studio is getting their talent. But if your after them why not offer the heavy hitters good jobs, and get them to entice the people they like best and open a new studio, you can't imagine how much cheaper this approach is. Honestly, though especially after the whole rare purchase I don't really see too many console makers going after publishers. Remember last generation the huge rumors of a Capcom buyout? Everyone thought Microsoft was going for it, then Capcom moved the whole RE series to the Gamecube and the rumor was Nintendo would buy them, and I really think they were going to, since the rumor mill kept saying, "get ready for a HUGE Nintendo announcement" right around the same time. But it never happened. And i think all of the big three are now all sitting on tons of great developers of their own, so why bother? Wii is doing well enough for Nintendo not to bother. Microsoft really doesn't need to secure an exclusive GTA since it already has plenty of exclusive content that helps it sell in America, Take Two franchises would hardly do much for them in Japan. So I don't see them bothering. And Sony is spending more money on internal development then anyone, and is anxously waiting to see the ps3 in some form of profitable stance, so throwing more money down the development drain is hardly a clever move for them.

This is true, but remember that even bigger than talent is the IPs that could be acquired. Think about it, nobody cares (at least in the US, maybe in Japan) that Joe Sixpack headed up development of a certain game, but they do remember that Grand Theft Auto was awesome and can't wait to play the sequel. I think Nintendo buying Take-Two would be far out there, further out there than Sony buying them, and much further out there than Microsoft buying them. They would seem to fit into Microsoft the best due to them having basically no first-party sports games (2K) and then exclusive GTA which would take away the best-selling series from Sony. But even then, as you point out, Microsoft is already getting GTA and other TT games on 360, it helps them little at best in Japan (the market where they currently struggle most). So bottom line I think anyone buying them at this point among the big three would be a surprise.

That would suck. I would rather MS buy them out and use them to make better sports titles...which is what I thought take two was only selling, it's sports part.

There is no way Nintendo would buy Take2. It would cost an absolute packet, and Nintendo have no interest in owing "troublesome" IP such as GTA. The loss of cross-platform support would also cost a huge amount of revenue and sales. Only a company interested in keeping them running as a cross-platform developer would purchase them - someone with too much money, such as "News Corp".

Nintendo doesn't like buying out companies. First of all, they let go of both RARE and Silicon Knights (That Too Human game BETTER be worth the ~10 years of time invested), two second party companies (though I don't think they ever "owned" Silicon Knights) I also remembering some time ago that Nintendo says that if they bought a company, what would happen if all the programmers left? Then they'd be out a bunch of money, they'd have some IP's, but the company would be gutted as far as talent is concerned. (i.e. Rare people leaving to from Free Radical and the Time Splitters IP) I think Nintendo would rather fund smaller developers and then in turn publish their IP's under exclusive liscenses, kind of like how they got Pokemon from Game Freak