The American computer games giant Electronic Arts (EA) has gatecrashed the £725m takeover of Codemasters, the London-listed producer of some of the world’s most popular motor racing titles.
Sky News has learnt that EA has tabled a potentially knockout bid for Codemasters, trumping an offer agreed last month with Take-Two Interactive Software, maker of the Red Dead franchise.
A gaming industry source said this weekend that EA was working with bankers at UBS on its offer.
The interest from EA, which has a market value of almost $40bn (£30bn), is likely to be disclosed to the stock market on Monday morning.
EA is among the world’s biggest computer games developers, and is best-known for its FIFA-licensed football titles, as well as games based on the Harry Potter books and Star Wars films.
The value of EA’s offer was unclear, although it is likely to be at a substantial premium to Codemasters’ closing share price on Friday of 534p.
It is not certain whether Take-Two, whose market capitalisation is roughly half the size of EA’s, will respond with a counterbid.
I don’t get why tho?
They already have racing studios, are they trying to consolidate that genre or something?
Sure, Codemasters does a lot more stuff than say, Criterion who do NFS, so mostly arcade. Codemasters might probably give them the Racing Sim side of the genre, especially with the F1 license and all.
Also, y’all realize what’s gonna happen? Forza Horizon, Forza Motorsport, Need for Speed, Dirt, F1, all on gamepass lmao
I believe Codemasters is public so it comes down to the shareholders. That said, I like EA’s racers so maybe they’d do right by them. Idk, do I have to pick? Maybe Microsoft can throw their hat in the ring for the hell of it.
tbh MS already has their own sim and arcade racer studios, arguably the best in the industry anyway no need for Codemasters, especially at a billion almost?
That is true, but always room for more like a PGR reboot. Also, owning Obsidian, PlayGround and InXile and expanding them greatly didn’t dissuade them from approaching Zenimax on and off for 2 years, although in that instance the company was much more diversified than Codemasters is.
Either way, I don’t see MS biting as I don’t see them wanting to step on EA and 2K’s toes for am area in which, as you mentioned, they are well-covered. Something like SE Europe or WB if they ever go to market may be a different story.
even if it could not many are outbidding 7 billion dollars
As for this in question , EA and 2K are definitely in a tit for tat fight that’s just gonna get bigger , even if EA doesn’t want codemasters no reason not to up the acquisition price of a competitor , pretty sure comcast did similar when disney was trying to buy fox .
Microsoft likely only announced the deal once it was already written down and set in stone, the only thing they have to do is wait for regulatory approval.
