Following yesterday Q3 fiscal results for Take-Two, Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey weighed in on the company, noting that the publisher behind GTA could still be an acquisition target. Electronic Arts aggressively pursued Take-Two last year prior to the release of GTA IV, but the companies couldn't agree on a price and ultimately the failed bid wound up costing EA $21 million.
Although Take-Two has insisted on remaining independent all along and has been making strides to show investors that it's more than simply a GTA publisher, that doesn't rule out the possibility of an acquisition/merger at some point in the future. "We continue to believe the company could be an appealing asset for an acquirer, particularly given the mega franchise centric nature of current market demand and retailer initial buys, in addition to the incredible game development talent and the potential online functionality of many of their games," commented Hickey.
Any publisher would of course be thrilled to add franchises like GTA, BioShock, NBA2K, Mafia and more to their portfolio. So who would the likely suitors be? Hickey told IndustryGamers that "the large multimedia guys are always potentials" and on the publisher side he pointed to Activision, "maybe" Ubisoft, and yes once again EA.
In the meantime, Hickey believes Take-Two is well positioned to benefit from the new motion technologies. "We believe the Natal technology from Microsoft and potentially the motion controller technology from Sony (both expected in CY10), could provide an inflection point in console installed base growth as each aggressively push for market share (including the elasticity benefits from recent price cuts); while Nintendo’s platform installed likely wanes from a faded value proposition and mounting pressure from the effervescent Apple Inc. Importantly, the majority of the [Take-Two's] IP is platform magnetic to Microsoft and Sony, potentially dampening a potential market retrenchment from Nintendo related products while benefiting from the aforementioned installed growth," he said.
