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It took slightly longer than expected, but today EA announced that they have finally pocketed Battlefield 2 developer, Digital Illusions:

The acceptance period for EA's offer to the shareholders of DICE, made on November 15, 2004, expired on January 20. Shareholders with a total of 3,235,053 shares in DICE(1), including Bonnier & Bonnier AB and DICE employees with significant shareholdings, have accepted EA's offer. This corresponds to 32.0% of the outstanding capital and votes in DICE. In addition to the above-mentioned offer, EA has acquired 898,264 shares in the market corresponding to 8.9% of the capital and votes in DICE.

Together with the 18.9% of the outstanding capital and votes already held by EA, EA now holds a total of 6,044,720 shares, a controlling interest representing 59.8% of the outstanding capital and votes in DICE. Additionally, EA holds warrants in DICE priced at SEK 47.23 which, if exercised, would bring EA's holdings to 67.3% of DICE shares. EA has not yet declared its intentions on whether those warrants will be exercised.

EA declares that the conditions for the tender offer have been fulfilled. Payment of the offer price to shareholders who have tendered their shares pursuant to the offer will commence and the transaction will be completed on or about January 27, 2005.

EA reserves the right to acquire additional shares in DICE in the market. (1) EA has also acquired the 1,500 warrants previously held by an individual in Canada. EA now controls all the 2,329,102 outstanding warrants in Digital Illusions. Each warrant entitles EA to subscribe for one Series A share.

mob-messenger wrote:The bigger they are, the harder they fall.... and EA is one big mamma jamma....

EA Predicts Price Hikes for Next-Gen Games 05:29 pm - Robert 'Apache' Howarth - games: general news (0 comments)
Also part of EA's conference call is that they are predicting that the prices of next-generation console games will rise:

"My comment would be that premium products will continue to command premium prices, so I would not expect a huge difference [in prices for calendar year '05]," said Probst, shifting slightly from his earlier comments. "If you take a look at the average selling price in the top 20 in calendar '05, compared to what it was in calendar '04... in fact, if you trend it over the last three or four years, that average selling price in the top 20 has been somewhere between $45 and $50. I would not expect a huge variance from that in '05."

He also comments about the consoles themselves:

"I would not expect Sony to have a head start on the next generation of hardware console systems," Probst said. In fact, Probst laid out a scenario where the PlayStation 3 might not make it stateside until late 2006. "[It] remains to be seen whether there will be new console launches from either Microsoft or Sony [in calendar year '05] and probably impossible to predict whether it's early or late '06 for PlayStation 3... it might turn out that PlayStation 3 is launched earlier in Japan than it is in North America and Europe."

According to MCV, EA would only merge with Ubisoft if that is what their shareholders and management wished:

"First, we want to keep all our options open," they offered. "We may seek a controlling interest. It is also possible that we will sell our shares.

"That said, we expect that if anything were to happen, it would happen with the full co-operation of Ubisoft. We have a tremendous amount of respect for their management team and their accomplishments.

"Management has been clear in its public statements that it will do what is best for its shareholders. We can't ask for more than that. "And finally, if anything were to happen, we will not over pay.

And... relax.