At the heart of video game news today, we could see a hell of a stir. Rumors concerning the takeover of EA by Amazon were widespread before being quickly invalidated by the main interested parties.
[Mis à jour le 26 août 2022 à 16h00] It was this morning that a good part of the players around the world woke up to some rather bewildering news. A report from Swedish newsmagazine Good Luck Have Fun, published in USAToday by Kirk McKeand mentions the impending takeover of Electronic Arts by none other than Amazon. A gargantuan acquisition that quickly sounded the commotion in the high journalistic spheres of the world of video games. The information was quickly picked up by Jason Schreier and Geoff Keighley and soon set the web on fire and stirred the imagination of Internet users most versed in the economy.
Because imagination would be needed to grasp the scale of such an operation. EA remains one of the largest video game publishers in the world, with an estimated value today of around $35 billion. Battlefield, Apex Legends, FIFA, Madden, Mass Effect, Dead Space, Battlefield… So many franchises that sleep warm in the drawers of Electronic Arts and that could have arrived in the hands of Amazon. Note the use of the conditional, since this takeover rumor was quickly denied by the American news channel CNBC:
The two network reporters can be heard in a conversation lightly mocking the site Good Luck Have Fun for its lack of references in the past. The Swedish newspaper’s lack of sources brings a smile, while CNBC says it heard from sources close to Amazon that no discussions were taking place. On the other hand, it is confirmed that Amazon and EA have previously communicated in the past, confirming certain rumors which claimed that Apple, Disney and Amazon had placed themselves as potential buyers.
These rumors echo the titanic takeover of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoft, worth 69 billion dollars, whose discussions are still ongoing according to Phil Spencer, CEO of Xbox. A purchase of this size had the gift of raising many questions about the ownership of the largest video game publishers, which has become a crucial point in the evolution of the entertainment market. Because indeed, owning publishers means owning licenses, and therefore owning significant market shares in an industry that is constantly growing, especially since the coronavirus pandemic.