if ms bought EA, then they have effectively just killed off sony in the vg business imo.

fifa
nfs
burnout
madden
nhl, all gone.

@Doats, to be honest, I think Sony would be fine :P They've got a TON of first/second party developers, and almost all of Sony's major players are non-EA related. Square Enix, Capcom, and Konami :P They'd still be profitable with their gaming devision.

@OP. It's tough when your gaming devision earns you pennies compared to your main event. If you look at the percentage of income that the xbox line brings in for Microsoft, you seriously have to wonder why they're even bothering with Gaming at all. Unlike Nintendo and Sony who garnish a fairly hefty income percentage from the status of they're respective gaming devisions, it's literally a few drops in a rather large bucket for Microsoft. I guess all in all, they have much more important things to take care of :/ Google is much more of a threat then Nintendo and Sony could be at the moment, don't hold your breath for too long on this one :x

No way would EA ever let themselves be bought off by MS. They're all about the profit, they'd never make an exclusive game.

Damn... I'm can't even imagine MS buying EA. How much "kaching" would that involve?

EA's buying studios like crazy then if MS buys EA.... Nah....

I dont understand why sony pictures part of SONY is releasing movies on Xbox live, and not on the PSN? Its stupid.

Sony seems to have given up on games to focus on movies maybe next gen it will be only Microsoft and nintendo with sony sitting out for four years trying to figure out how to program with cell architecture.  There is no need to buy EA they are happy with licensing fees from them they need to help an buy up and coming innovative studios not the software leader is sports.  I think a japanese one would help crack japan open for them.  Just make sure its a good one.

There's a lot of legal reasons why MS won't buy EA. For example, Madden is required by the NFL to be on every system, or they lose NFL exclusivity.

Never mind the fact that EA makes money by being multi-platform, so if MS bought them they would lose most of their value because they would pretty much lose money on everything. Same reasons people argued that Sony wouldn't buy Take-Two back when rumors on that came up last year. (Notice how instead it's EA, another third-party, who's trying to buy Take-Two.)

Take two needs to resist EA we don't want another medium size 3rd party being gobbled up in my opinion.