Funny how desperate EA is to get this deal done before GTAIV launches...

wow, the industry is consolidating for real!

wonder what's gonna happen next. there aren't that many big players left. small companies going out of business, or only the good ones get picked one by one?

too much hate on EA.

There have been rumors of Sony going after R* for a few years now.  After the EA news, they may have felt compelled to make a bid on the entirety of Take 2.

how can take two be losing money? they have sports franchises to bring in money year after year, they have rockstar and they now have bioshock. they must really suck at running a company to lose money with that.

The video game market is a VERY harsh one from what I have gleaned. It is not hard to conceive a situation where even EA goes belly up... Not that it will happen. The only thing that can save a company after so many years of the same thing only repackaged is FRESH IDEAS. This where the small devs come in. They usually have good ideas but can't put them into epic games like they would want due to financial constraints.

You people do realize Take Two owns more than just Rockstar right? All this talk about GTA and no mention of what will happen to The Elder Scrolls!

I can't see how the shareholders are going to say no to this. There's been questions about the American market plummeting, and lots of insecurity in the market. Now they can get 60% more than the last value. That's a lot of money.

From what I've read, a lot of the shares are no longer in the hands of the original shareholders. Since EA made their bid, some "arbitrageurs" have bought shares at prices close to $26 (EA's offer), in the hopes of making a few cents of profit per share (or $1 or $2 more dollars than that if they can convince EA to pay more).

What this means is that many of the people who originally had Take Two's shares have already taken their profits, and now it's more in the hands of people who just care about the immediate money they can make from the conclusion of this deal.

Related articles:

http://www.rttnews.com/sp/breakingnews.asp?date=03/10/2008&item=172&vid=0

http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKN1225828120080313

Some quotes:

Asked about that view, EA's Riccitiello said: "I knew a couple weeks ago that a number of shareholders were steadfast in their view that the offer needed to be above $26, but some of them have already sold at that. Now it's held by new people, and at the right moment they will consider our offer."

One arbitrage trader who specializes in takeovers said investors had to weigh the certainty of cash now against hopes that the shares would rise in a shaky economic environment.

^ That can't be a lot. EA bid 2 Billion to the shareholders, how much do you think these people can have bought? It can't be a lot higher than 50Million, and that's 2.5% only, so that's not a big difference, as most of the people who sold would have accepted anyway.

Take Two has a link on their page http://www.take2games.com/ (under corporate and EA OFFER. ) My antivirus shuts the page off though.

How did you get to those numbers? The trading volume on Take Two shares has been huge in the past few weeks. At least two of the big shareholders of Take Two have dumped most of their stock, now who would suddenly be interested in buying if not those risk arbitrageurs? Many shareholders are taking their profits now instead of risking the deal not going through and Take Two never going back to near $26 levels.

There are some unknowns here, but it seems like the most likely thing considering the articles I've seen about this.