Mergers aren't fully cash transactions and you only need to control 51% of the shares for a hostile takeover. It's not like buying a car, you don't buy the whole thing.

this is still from the worst filth of gaming journalism anyways. Gamepro is horrid so dont believe anything they say.

this would be a good move by microsoft but i dont think it will happen

1 billion wow, thats a lot of money

MS let's Bungie go, and completely ignores BioWare and Bizarre, letting them get snatched up by EA and Activision, but they're suddenly going to buy Epic? The company that has only produced one second party game for them? This makes little sense.

Epic likes their independence too much to be bought. They are a fan of mods and user-gerated content, something that MS loathes.  Hell, they even make some of their games for Linux.

 and Mac

Microsoft overtures to Yahoo aren't exactly "hostile", since hte major shareholders are all for it, and if it came down to a vote, Yahoo's mgmt will lose badly and embrassingly. The only thing to be worked out is fine tuning the final price for this to happen, over the next few weeks and months.

As for the subject of this topic..it's pretty huge news for the 360. Epics...let's see:

- Unreal engine, which is in a TON of games out on the market, and which will allow the 360 to get an even stronger foothold on the 3rd person market.

- Microsoft will have some pretty nifty data on programming on the PS3. think of it as one country getting their hands on another weapon systems data.

- Microsoft makes money off PS3 games...since all these developers are using the Unreal engine to make games.

C'mon...look at the list of people using the engine:

http://www.epicgames.com/

holee cow...and with the financial backing of M$$$...work can get started on improving the Unreal engine to keep the competitive edge, while squeezing every bit of capability out of the system. This is a huge win for Microsoft, if Epic agrees to the deal.

 That's not saying much.  MS released Halo 1/2 for Macs.

im going to stand up ans say 1 billion isnt enough to buy Epic. Microsoft would have to offer at least 10 billion for Epic.

Epic is worth more than Activision?????

As of today, Activision's market cap was $7.93 billion.

$10 billion would make Epic the second biggest independent game developer in the world.