A little over a month ago, the publisher Take-Two announced that it has agreed to buy Codemasters, a British company quite known for its racing- based franchises, among which we can see the game of this year dedicated to Formula 1. This would have helped the company fill a gap in its production in this genre, since Take-Two isn’t producing anything in the way of racing games currently.
However, in the past few hours, a very relevant fact has come to light: those plans could be suspended due to an apparent offer made by Electronic Arts. According to Sky News, EA has made an even larger offer than Take-Two’s £725 million (nearly $1 billion) offer, and it will likely be made public starting today.
It does not appear that Codemasters has accepted EA’s offer yet and the publisher has declined to comment on what Sky News was asked of it. Take-Two could potentially rekindle its celebrated Midnight Club franchise with the talent of Codemasters, but acquiring such acclaimed racing studios would make sense for Electronic Arts as well.
Although Criterion Games has been successful with Need for Speed and has taken over the lead in the development of the franchise, the series as a whole has had some particular difficulties in recent years. More racing experts to contribute to the next game could be very valuable to EA.
The acquisition of Codemasters from one of the two companies would undoubtedly be great news, even if this year we have seen hard and fast: Microsoft has agreed to buy Bethesda Softworks for $7.5 billion. This makes it the second-largest gaming industry acquisition of all time, just after Tencent bought Supercell for $8.6 billion.
Microsoft’s deal isn’t officially closed yet, meaning Bethesda must legally operate as a separate entity for now, but it will provide Microsoft with one of the best gaming studio lists in the world.
