At the rate things are going, the entire gaming industry will only be owned by a small handful of giant corporations. According to new information first revealed by news company USA TODAY, Amazon will soon announce a formal offer to acquire Electronic Arts (EA), the developer and distributor of FIFA titles, Battlefield, Apex Legends and many more. Rumors have been circulating online for several weeks. About a potential purchase of EA, with the names of Apple, Disney and Amazon emerging as potential buyers.According to the sources on the site, the announcement of the purchase will be made during the coming weekend.
This news comes after a series of unprecedented acquisitions in the field of video games, the largest of which is Microsoft’s purchase of Activision for $69 billion. Microsoft bought Bethesda the year before for $7.5 billion. Sony recently bought Bungie for $3.5 billion. Since those purchases, more and more rumors and new information about the other big players in the market have surfaced. According to the reports, Ubisoft is one of those companies that will not behave for an external acquisition. EA was also looking to sell itself or merge with another company.
On the other hand, it’s a smart business move from Amazon. After the success of The Witcher and Arcane series on Netflix – two series built around major video games – Amazon may use the EA franchise as content for new shows. EA’s library has a lot of potential for interesting things, Mass Effect immediately comes to mind.
If this move does come to fruition, it will be interesting to see how it will affect the entire gaming industry today. Both EA and Activision occupy the 5th and 6th places in the list of the ten largest gaming companies in the world. One will already be Microsoft which is considered the second gaming company in the world after Sony which bought Bungie. Nintendo is third but probably won’t make a major purchase anytime soon. Tencent in fourth place has its hands in almost everything. It owns 48% of the company Epic Games, which itself is in seventh place. Amazon is not on the list at all, but with the acquisition of a company like EA, Amazon will likely jump to the top.
One can only imagine what would happen if a company like Apple decided to open its wallet and enter this field (it is highly doubtful that such a thing would actually happen). The largest technology and media companies in the world see the distribution companies and developers of the gaming field as a valuable target, with talent and rich content. As a result we will see more and more acquisitions as an example of what we have seen over the last two years.