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The "dirty" confrontation between gaming giants is about to make another victim: EA has recently announced its intention to acquire Take Two Interactive, for $2 billion in cash.

After Activision's surprising merger with Warcraft, Diablo and Starcraft makers Blizzard (owned by Vivendi Group), and after Microsoft's $44 billion bid for Yahoo, it is now time for EA to enter the spotlight, with a mere $2 billion offer for smaller rival Take Two. In cash.

It appears that on February 19 this year, EA big kahuna John Riccitiello sent a private letter to his Take Two counterpart Strauss Zelnick, informing the latter and the company board that the second largest publisher in the world is really, really anxious to add Take Two to its stamp collection... Since TT's board refused the deal considering it too small, EA decided to make the buyout-offer public, so that each and every shareholder gets to know how bad, mean, evil and malevolent the TT board of directors is for rejecting such fortunes... (who knows, maybe the deal got turned down because Zelnick wanted to say: "come on guys, you can do better than that!") 

Obviously, like any other monopolistic behemoth (Microsoft anyone?...) EA made the bid public just to let Take Two's leaders know that they don't care about their opinion or about what people say, they just want GTA and they'll gonna get it no matter what... In business language, EA's move is defined as a hostile bid, in which the big fish swallows the small fish  to eliminate competition. Now why are we not surprised, hm....

Take a look at this sample of bullish offer, written by EA's lawyers for their big boss Riccitiello:

"Thank you for your letter of February 15, 2008. While I appreciate its courteous tone and value our ongoing dialogue, I am disappointed that you have rejected Electronic Arts Inc.'s ("EA's") $25 per share cash offer to acquire Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. ("Take-Two") and declined to engage in the friendly negotiations we proposed. We continue to believe that an acquisition of Take-Two by EA is in the best interests of your shareholders, employees and other constituents, and we remain interested in acquiring Take-Two. So, to further demonstrate our seriousness and encourage you to move forward now, I am writing to increase EA's offer to acquire all of the outstanding shares of Take-Two to $26 per share in cash." Moreover, the latter urges Take Two's shareholders to put their signature on the merger as soon as possible, because "There can be no certainty that in the future EA or any other buyer would pay the same high premium we are offering today..." Riccitiello also said that GTA IV's launch will also benefit from EA's expertise and vast distribution network, which should boost sales for Rockstar's free-roaming, open-world action title.

As if all these arguments hadn't been enough, EA's CEO added that there's no need for loans, the company he leads already has $2 billion in cash and is willing to waste'em spend then wisely on Take Two shares...

Do we need to remind you that Electronic Arts' acquisition spree engulfed Pandemic/BioWare last fall for $800 million?...