Electronic Arts is in the crosshairs of Apple
It is known that in recent months, Electronic Arts has been in talks with numerous corporations about a prospective acquisition or, more precisely, some form of merger that would allow the whole or partial retention of the company's current board of directors. As Kotaku has disclosed, some conversations have already taken place in this regard, however, it is true that two of the cases that have occurred have reached a dead end.
The Disney corporation was the first to consider the prospect of purchasing Electronic Arts. The pick does not appear to be random, given that Electronic Arts has already released many video game titles based on one of the company's properties. However, according to these rumors, Disney has finally caved in. Yes, the reason for the media behemoth's withdrawal is unknown.
Following that, directors of Electronic Arts would have met with those of the NBCUniversal group, which was also interested in acquiring EA. In this situation, it appears that the reason for the failure to reach an agreement is precisely what was stated from the outset, namely, the desire of Electronic Arts' present CEO, Andrew Wilson, to remain in command of the company after the merger is completed.
However, the most notable attempt is that of Apple, which, according to these rumors, has also gone to the table to negotiate a prospective acquisition. Yes, it appears even more improbable that Wilson will retain his current position, and even more doubtful that those in Cupertino will consent to a merger in which the identities of both firms will blend to form a new organization. Even with its naysayers, Apple's brand image is one of the most valuable in the technology sector.
However, unlike Disney and NBCUniversal, there is no evidence that the talks have concluded, so we may assume that the possibility is still open in this case. If verified, Apple's acquisition of Electronic Arts would be the Cupertino company's first major step in the video game industry.
And is that its most significant move in this regard, so far, is the launch of Apple Arcade, its game subscription service for the brand's devices, a quite interesting proposal but in which we did not find anything remotely resembling a triple-A title, which is Electronic Arts' specialty with many of its franchises. Yes, there are such titles, but they have very limited representation in macOS.
Apple is clearly very proud of the performance that Apple Silicon provides, so they may believe that the time has come to enhance the gaming experience on macOS, and possibly on the iPad Pro as well. Of course, the offer is pretty limited in this regard. We may now assume that if Apple acquires Electronic Arts, this will change dramatically in the medium term.
The key question is, of course, how the GPU included in the Apple M1's SoC would handle the demands of a triple-A, an extraordinarily difficult task.
This speculation comes at a particularly chaotic time in the business, with Microsoft attempting to acquire Activision Blizzard, Sony pursuing Bungie, Haven Studios, and FromSoftware, and just today with the completion of Take-integration Two's with Zynga, as seen by the company's tweet.
