IGN: Nexon looking to buy EA?

[maniacalpha1-1]

http://games.ign.com/articles/122/1223835p1.html

Free-to-play developer/publisher Nexon could be looking to buy Electronic Arts. According to Bloomberg, which picked up on the news from a Korean newspaper, Nexon "has contacted EA about making an offer." No word on whether this would see EA absorbed or merged.

Could this save the gaming industry from what EA is doing to it?

 

[CuriousMike]

Oh yeah man... let's have Maplestory define our gaming.

 

[paperfist]

More like the end of gaming.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

It could make things worse, yes. But there's also a chance they could undo what EA has done, for example, to Bioware.

 

[CPA]

Analysts seem to think there is validity in this as their stock price has gone up 7% today.

I wonder if this is going to an asset purchase or stock purchase. Whichever, the prices is going to be in the several billions of dollars.

 

[terry107]

Not familiar with Nexon, however, their Wiki states that they had a very successful IPO in December. I would assume from that they have the capital available to make this a possibility.

 

[Gheris]

Superdeformed graphics in EA sports games? NEXON can do it!

 

[gorcorps]

Oh good, then you can download Madden free but you get a bunch of shitty fake teams to start with. Then it's $5 per professional team you want to use. Want to use a shotgun formation? That's not in your default playbook, must buy $2 shotgun playbook. None of your field goals are making it in, even if you have max power and are at 30 yds? Must have ran out of air in the ball... $1 for 100 refils.

 

[SergeC]

This is going to make things worse, if it changes them at all.

 

[Red Storm]

 

[Arglebargle]

This sort of thing is EA's fault for being dumbasses.

I'd love to see this happen, if only for seeing the pink slip shock the yahoos in management would finally get after all these years of giving them out.

 

[troy10]

Wow if true. Hopefully SimCity comes out before this happens - no telling what changes will take place.

 

[Glitchny]

This would not help things at all.

 

[I4AT]

Nexon is big enough to buy EA? From mostly free to play Korean MMO's? Seriously?

 

[CrackRabbit]

It could make things worse, yes. But there's also a chance they could undo what EA has done, for example, to Bioware.

Or they could do what EA did to Origin, Bullfrog, Westwood and many others...

 

[DarkKnightDude]

I doubt it'll happen.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/40617/Report-Nexon-makes-EA-takeover-bid

"It is doubtful that Nexon could afford a complete takeover of EA, which has a market cap of $5.28 billion compared to Nexon's cash assets of $1.55 billion."

 

[Stuka87]

I don't see how this could at all be good for gamers. But I really don't see where Nexon could come up with the capital to be a multi-billion dollar company.

 

[Zenoth]

Doesn't sound right, I doubt it will happen.

 

[Maximilian]

Maybe the offer was "EA we will give you $1 for your shitty company and piss poor reputation"

 

[StrangerGuy]

It's hilarious when F2P MMO company can even make an attempt to buy out EA with a $15/month MMO plus million of other IPs. Either Nexon is crazy or EA is so completely broken at this point.

 

[darkewaffle]

It's hilarious when F2P MMO company can even make an attempt to buy out EA with a $15/month MMO plus million of other IPs. Either Nexon is crazy or EA is so completely broken at this point.

They're like a bigger, Asian Zynga; but they've also been doing it a lot longer and in more markets. Six years ago they'd already made $300M off MapleStory alone.

It's pretty impractical though; Nexon does have a larger market cap but not nearly enough cash for an acquisition so they would have to make up the difference with stock and probably future pay for performance options and such. Napkin math but EA is worth about 5.3B atm, take 1.5B cash from that and Nexon would still need to come up with 3.8B. 3.8B in stock would leave EA with possession of over 25% of the merged entity's shares, which is a pretty huge position, especially for a "foreign" company which a lot of Nexon investors would probably be opposed to.

Though not sure how being the subject of a proposed acquisition makes an organization "broken". You don't buy acquire something because it's busted, you buy it because it's going to make you more money.

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

I don't see how they could make EA worse so I welcome it.

 

[PrayForDeath]

Never heard of Nexon before today. How come they are bigger than EA? WTF?

 

[Matthiasa]

Anyone that has ever played any Nexon game before they know just how much worse they could make EA.
If you thought EA was bad now just wait if that goes through.

 

[CottonRabbit]

Anyone that has ever played any Nexon game before they know just how much worse they could make EA.
If you thought EA was bad now just wait if that goes through.

This. Unless, of course, you have both ample amounts of time to grind in a game and ample cash to pay 2 win with microtransaction.