I mentioned this a couple of days ago, but the weird kabuki dance between Electronic Arts and Take Two. Take Two let EA’s unsolicited offer expire on Monday, and the two companies signed a deal to explore “strategic alternatives.”

Well, now Reuters is reporting that it has no problems with a possible EA deal with Take Two. An interesting tidbit behind this courting process is that EA CEO John Riccitiello, and Take-Two Executive Chairman Strauss Zelnick over the weekend, according to EA.

It makes me wonder how close a deal actually is.

We all know that Electronic Arts has been eyeing Take Two for a while now. The company that publishes the 2K Sports games and the Grand Theft Auto franchise has key properties that EA would love to snatch up.

Well, after the Redwood City company’s initial offer was rejected. I thought it would be settled: no sale. But apparently, it’s not so simple. Although EA’s offer expired on Monday, the L.A. Times says the deal isn’t dead yet. We kind of got that impression from this press release on Monday.

The two companies are trying to work together to seek strategic alternatives now that EA’s initial offer is officially dead. I suppose this could either be a prelude to a megadeal or something else. We’ll have to wait on Thursday at the earliest for the story to move forward. That’s when the Federal Trade Commission will conclude its antitrust investigation of a potential deal.

Look down on casual games all you want but it’s hard to deny that Bejeweled is a great game. It’s the first thing I get every time I get a new cell phone and it has a broad enough appeal that my mom, my grandma and I all play. It’s pretty close to nearing Tetris levels of ubiquity.

Even taking that into account, PopCap’s announcement that Bejeweled has sold 25,000,000 units for more than $300,000,000 is still amazing. That’s nearing GTA4 amounts of revenue and, considering it probably didn’t have anywhere near GTA4 levels of production costs, an incredible amount of profit.

Put this together with the Wii and it just goes to prove that you can put the best graphics and the most advanced AI on the most advanced hardware in the world and it will make less money than a game with fun gameplay and archaic graphics every time.

I’ve always wondered when Hollywood would get into the video game business. I don’t mean licensing per se. Having someone else making a video game based on your intellectual property isn’t exactly jumping into the industry.

What I’m talking about is Hollywood studios using its money and resources to fund video game studios and original games.

There’s a good article on Portfolio.com about this concept, and according to Ben Fritz, Warner Bros. and more specifically Disney are leading the way.

I really like the crux of the article, which is that Hollywood is seeing DVD sales go flat and with a splintered audience, box office receipts aren’t as stellar on the whole. (Sorry, The Dark Knight can’t save Hollywood profits.) Meanwhile, video game sales are booming.

Ben Fritz looks at which studios are going to capitalize on this whole video game thing, and its interesting to read the history of both publishers. I have to say that Warner Bros. purchase of Traveller’s Tales is looking pretty genius right about now.

Meanwhile, Disney does have a good core of studios with Fall Line being the most notable. Unlike Fritz, I’m not too high on some of their original IPs. Spectrobes seems decent. I’m not a fan of their tween games though they seem to sell well. But I do like Ultimate Band for the Nintendo DS. That has a bit of potential but I don’t think you can turn that into a ride.

The short version: Activision and Vivendi have officially merged, finalizing a deal first announced in December 2007. Vivendi is the parent company of Sierra and Blizzard which are now subsidiaries of the new merged company.

The long, boring version: Vivendi is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Activision. As part of the deal Vivendi buys 295.3 million newly-issued shares of Activision stock plus an additional 62.9 million shares worth a total of about $1.7 billion. This means Vivendi owns 52% of its new parent company.

The part you care about: The company’s new name is Activision Blizzard and World of Warcraft will be unaffected.

(From Kotaku)

Oh how the mighty have fallen. They have fallen and they fell hard. It’s almost cartoonish in a way. I’m talking about Wile E. Coyote jumping out of a plane without a parachute hard and crashing through the center of the earth hard.

The Xbox 360 HD-DVD add-on, which once sold for $199.99, is now selling for a grand total of … $5, according to Punch Jump. The deal is reportedly at K-mart. Maybe it’s part of their blue-light specials?

The NPD Group is reporting that for the first five months of 2008 video game software sales have gone up 45% and hardware sales 17%.

While I’m not hugely shocked by this - Grand Theft Auto effect explains the software and Wii Effect explains the hardware - that is a lot of extra revenue. And the industry is on pace to hit $21-$23 billion in sales for the year.

Why is this good for gamers? Because it means people are taking it more and more seriously. You have Steven Spielberg getting into gaming, games being turned into big-budget moves not directed by Uwe Boll and game budgets going up in expectation for higher revenue resulting in higher quality. We all win!

(From InformationWeek)

The Rock Band and Guitar Hero the potential to be as big as the iPod when it comes to music. I’ve always thought this, especially when Harmonix’s title came out.

Well, now that effect can be seen in the marketplace, according to Reuters. When Motley Crue decided to post their new single to Rock Band, it was apparently like throwing a hand grenade into a fire. The thing blew up and pretty quick.

Here’s the most telling quote:

According to data provided by the band’s management, Tenth Street Entertainment, the track was downloaded more than 47,000 times via the Xbox 360 version …by comparison, the same track received slightly more than 10,000 downloads via digital services like iTunes and Amazon, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

For the record: This is how the market looks: Rock Band > iTunes
Put in another way, the stat looks like this: future > past

Microsoft announced today that 10 million Xbox 360s have been sold in the US, beating Sony and Nintendo to the milestone. According to Reuters, 8.8 million Wiis and 4.1 PlayStation 3s have been sold.

While overall market penetration is important (developers are more likely to make games for a system if there’s more console owners out there to buy them) an arbitrary milestone doesn’t mean a whole lot when they started at different times. So let’s level the playing field…

Console - Approx. Sold Per Day (Days Since Launch)
Wii - 16,635 (529)
360 - 11,223 (891)
PS3 - 7,635 (537)

But look on the bright side, Microsoft. You’ve got a commanding lead (143% total sales, 47% per day sales) over Sony on both counts.

Despite the slumping economy and rising gas and food costs, Colin Sebastian of Lazard Capital Markets predicts April’s software sales to be up at least 70% compared to April 2007, thanks mostly to GTA IV and Mario Kart. And that’s actually the conservative estimate. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan estimated an increase of 113%. Considering how much revenue game sales generate that’s a lot of extra money gamers spent, even taking into account the astronomical amount of money GTA brought in.

This has surprised a few economists. Why would people be buying more games at $60 when it costs a ridiculous $57.46 to fill up your tank (not that I’m bitter)? My theory is that the increase in game sales is exactly because of gas prices. It’s too expensive to go anywhere so people are putting their movie/sporting event/bar/opera/cock fight budget into games instead.

So what about all of you? Are you buying more games than you did last year and why?

(From GameDaily)