Games Industry Wire

The EA-Take-Two saga continues as Electronic Arts (EA) has extended its offer to buy Take-Two from midnight on April 11 to 11:59 p.m., April 18. EA says the extension is in response to action taken by Take-Two on March 26, including putting a “poison pill” in place and pushing its 2008 annual meeting of stockholders back to April 17. Investopedia describes a “poison pill” as a method companies use to discourage hostile takeovers. The goal is to make its stock less attractive to the buyer. The two types of pills include:

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It looks like the Paramount movie studio wants a slice of the lucrative videogame pie. An article on Variety reveals the movie studio will be publishing casual games based on its movie properties. Apparently, its first titles will be ready this year.
“”There’s going to be a slate where in some cases we’re publishing, in some cases we’re co-publishing, or in others we’re funding development and another publisher buys it,” said Sandi Isaacs, Paramount’s senior VP of interactive and mobile. “It’s important for us to have a flexible model.”

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IRVINE, Calif. – Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. today announced that World of Warcraft®, its award-winning, subscription-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), is being prepared for release in Latin America. The Latin American localization will be based on the existing European Spanish version but will feature entirely re-recorded in-game speech. This new version of the game will be rolled out in select markets throughout Latin America starting in the first half of 2008 and will also be available to Spanish-speaking players in the US and Canada at that time.

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SEOUL, KOREA (March 25, 2008) – NCsoft® Corporation, the world’s leading developer and publisher of online computer games, today announced that it has reinforced its relationship with Epic Games, Inc. by licensing Unreal Engine 3 to develop two unannounced, top-tier massively multiplayer online games. NCsoft has achieved spectacular results working with the Unreal Engine over the years, shipping the highly successful Lineage® II, and the soon to be released Exteel ™, using Unreal Engine 2.
“Unreal Engine 3 has a well structured rendering pipeline, and its graphical quality is superb thanks to advanced lighting and shadowing systems,” said Young-muk Choi, lead …read more

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March 17, 2008 – Epic Games, Inc. and Valve, two of the PC industry’s leading technology and content development studios, have inked an agreement to bring Epic’s award-winning titles to Steam, a leading platform for PC games and digital content with over 15 million accounts around the world.
The Epic hits now available on Steam include Epic’s debut classic, Unreal Gold, as well as Unreal II: The Awakening and the Unreal Tournament series of games, including the recently released Unreal Tournament 3, which has shipped over one million copies to date.

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Apparently, some crafty internet sleuths were able to piece information together and figure out that City of Heroes developer Cryptic will be handling the long delayed Star Trek Online MMO. Cryptic isnt saying anything official yet but at least we know if its Cryptic, the game is in good hands.

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Nintendo’s DS and Wii resume their positions as the number one and two consoles sold, respectively, in February in the US. But the big surprise was the strong showing of the PS2 at 3rd with 350K consoles sold
US VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY – FEBRUARY 2008
Software: $668.7m (+47%)
Hardware: $480.0 million (+19%)
Accessories: $185.3m (+36%)
Total Games: $1.33 billion (+34%)

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March 12, 2008- Atari, Inc. (Nasdaq: ATAR), one of the world’s most recognized brands and a third-party video game publisher and distributor, and Valve today announced an agreement to bring a variety of PC games from the Atari catalog to Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content with over 15 million accounts around the world.
Starting today, gamers in North America may add the following Atari titles to their Steam games library:
Act of War: Direct ActionT – a real-time strategy experience that puts players squarely in control of counterterrorist forces and delivers a …read more

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EA is now turning to Take-Two’s shareholders to divest them of their share at $26 USD, The same amount offered by EA to Take-Two’s board of governors. EA big boss John Riccitiello says:
This is a great opportunity for Take-Two shareholders. We believe Take-Two investors will see our tender offer as the best way to maximize the value of their investment in Take-Two. This tender offer provides a clear process to complete the proposed transaction. For EA shareholders, the combination would add additional intellectual properties to our already strong portfolio and welcome Take-Two’s talented creative teams to the great development organization …read more

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Take-Two has announced the sequel to its huge hit BioShock at call to discuss its quarterly financial results. No details regarding the game were given However, Take-Two executives confirmed previous rumors that the Irrational Games team (now 2K Boston) would not be developing the sequel. Instead, 2K Marin has been tasked with creating the next in the BioShock franchise. 2K Boston’s Ken Levine will be involved in the sequel, however.
If you’re wondering why Take-Two would announce Bioshock 2 so early, it is likely due to EA’s recent attempts at acquiring the company as this announcement of a BioShock sequel would …read more

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