Report: EA Sought After By Amazon, Disney, Apple, Nearly Merged With NBCU

Games Report: EA Sought After By Amazon, Disney, Apple, Nearly Merged With NBCU Paul Tassi Senior Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet. May 21, 2022, 08:31am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Apex Legends Respawn With Activision Blizzard’s tentative sale to Microsoft, no major video game publisher is off the table for purchase, which includes Electronic Arts, the giant, often controversial purveyor of games like Madden, Apex Legends and Battlefield. A new story from subscription news service Puck reports that a whole bunch of major companies have been circling EA in both entertainment and tech, including Amazon, Disney and Apple. But what almost came to pass was a merger with NBC Universal, where the Comcast-NBCU chief, Brian Roberts, was going to spin off NBCU and merge it with Electronic Arts. The report says the deal fell apart last month, part of a string of failures from Comcast-NBCU who also failed to land the FOX entertainment asset sale, and missed the WarnerMedia merger for those assets. The idea here was that this newly merged company could have a big impact in games, but ultimately the deal did not come to pass. While the almost-merger with NBCU and EA is the crux of the story, the fact that Disney, Apple and Amazon were all reported to be potentially interested in EA may actually prove to be a bigger deal. Microsoft and Sony have been buying up large and small independent publishers, some teeny tiny, some truly enormous, and there are vanishingly few left the longer time goes on. People gather at the Electronic Arts (EA) E3 press conference at the Hollywood Palladium in … [+] Hollywood, California, June 10, 2017. The EA press conference is held in conjunction with the annual Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) which focuses on gaming systems and interactive entertainment, featuring introductions to new products and technologies. / AFP PHOTO / Andrew Cullen (Photo credit should read ANDREW CULLEN/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images MORE FOR YOU ‘Demon Slayer’ Season 2 Finally Has An Actual 2021 Release Date Netflix’s ‘Squid Game’ Season 2 Not A Sure Thing, Says Director ‘Genshin Impact’ Still Refuses To Increase Anniversary Rewards, Despite Fan Outcry Those that are left are making moves that all indicate possible sale in the future. We have this EA story, we’ve seen similar action surrounding Ubisoft as of late. Square Enix just sold off a few western developers which could be a potential slimming down for sale to someone like Sony. But lurking behind all of this is Big Tech and Big Entertainment. In entertainment’s case, video games are larger than the TV and movie industries combined. Disney has farmed out its IPs like Star Wars and Marvel to loads of developers after mostly exiting the industry themselves, but perhaps now they’re realizing that was maybe the wrong move. The same goes for NBCU/Comcast, who clearly saw the value in the space if this merger almost happened. Big Tech, meanwhile, has more money than god (well, less so after this month in the market, but still). Amazon has its in-house gaming ambitions, but they’re painfully small compared to its overall size. It has a game streaming service no one has ever heard of (Luna!) and just two games of any real consequence, Lost Ark and New World (Lost Ark was an existing game they simply moved west, New World is not exactly healthy). So a huge acquisition could be a way back in. Apple is always hanging around the gaming space given the iOS games market, recently controversial due to Epic Games’ war against them and the 30% store cut. But Apple buying EA to publish games at scale would be a different sort of move altogether. And even if that didn’t happen, it shows they’re looking. Lord knows what Google and Meta might be up to. What’s clear is the video game industry will continue to consolidate, and it seems increasingly likely the next giant purchase that’s made, it may not be from Sony or Microsoft, but someone out of the industry who wants to be a player, whether they’re coming from entertainment or tech. Follow me on Twitter , YouTube , Facebook and Instagram . Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls . Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy . Paul Tassi Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions