The game industry arms race, the next big company that may be acquired may be it

After Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard for a record-breaking $68.7 billion, the game industry will enter an arms race. It is expected that the competitiveness of the Xbox platform will increase by leaps and bounds in the future. Competitors have also begun to consider buying large game manufacturers to compete. It is believed that Electronic Arts will be the most likely target to be acquired.

In the past, most of the mergers and acquisitions in the game industry were smaller companies or studios, with an amount of millions to tens of millions of dollars. Until early last year, Microsoft first acquired ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Bethesda, for $7.5 billion. Then Take-Two bought Zynga, a mobile game company, for $12.7 billion. At the beginning of this year, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard at a sky-high price. In less than a year, the record for the amount of mergers and acquisitions broke three times in a row, which has a profound impact on the structure of the game industry.

According to an analysis by the Financial Times, the next most likely to be bought will be the American Electronic Arts (EA), with a current market value of about $38 billion. For technology giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Netflix or Meta, It is not difficult to eat.

For a big company similar in size to Activision Blizzard, EA has been doing quite well in recent years, including buying mobile game companies Playdemic and Glu Mobile for $3.6 billion, and there has been no sexist scandal similar to Activision Blizzard’s global attention.

Therefore, the Financial Times believes that Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta and Netflix, technology giants that are willing to increase investment in the game industry, are all possible buyers, and EA prices are not a big problem for them.

The report finally pointed out that as a direct competitor of Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s wealth is not as strong as Microsoft’s, and it needs to be carefully considered if it wants to acquire EA.

Whether there will be major news from EA this year, it will be time to prove, if it is confirmed, the amount may once again break the record set by Microsoft and Activision Blizzard.

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