Eidos Begins Takeover Talks

How can Edios name still be worth selling as they haven't had any good games in years?

So who sets these expectations? A bunch of white shirt wearing dudes who are watching their bonuses based on profit margins get smaller and smaller. When will publishers get it that they are UNECESSARY? The distribution channels and ability to generate PR and buzz online has matured to the point that if you make not just a GREAT game, but even a decent game, it should eventually pay for itself and little more. The future is subscription based, direct to consumer digital distribution over networks. These publishers are still killing trees and polluting our environment with packaging, while they claim games need big bucks thrown at them in the form of end-aisle displays, fancy TV commercials, and print ads in trade mags, along with the occasional promotional event.

As goes hollywood, so goes the game development business. Independent filmmakers have found themselves relegated to art cinema houses (now closing near you) partly because we as a society have been force fed such crap from the big studios that we cant figure out a movie if it doesnt explain literally every moment of a film. Then when you actually watch a movie, say one made outside North America, is has these odd things like long cuts, extended dialog, and plots slightly more complex than "Boy meets girl, boy bonks girl, boy kills bad guy (you can switch any of those by the way and the formula still works). WOW! An actual plot! So THAT'S what movies are supposed to look and feel like!

Game developers are feeling the same pressure. Make blockbuster games because its the only thing we KNOW will sell. Dont make games that are original...that challenge the player to think, to toss their conventions out the window for the sake of storytelling or unique gameplay approaches.

However I know everyone would be happy to see a DRM we can all live with. Then, noone will have any excuse to say "It didnt sell well because of piracy".

I don't see how selling 1.5 million copies (instead of 2 million) is going to make you have lay offs.

I figure, even at 50 bucks a game x 1.5 million is still 75 million dollars. I guess that's not alot of money? I'm trying to take into consideration the cost of the building/electric, payroll, etc. but really? How long does it take to make yet another TR game, much less resources?

I guess that's why I'm not in the gaming biz :(

RIP.

If this is true I can only hope it gets bought by someone who will do something with the Thief series. Man, I would love for the Bioshock guys to take a swing at that, they got such a sense for atmosphere that would really fit in with Thief.

I hope this doesn't affect the development of Deus Ex 2.

If u read some of the articles about the game development industry youd get a better understanding of how brutal it is.

I'm pretty sure Eidos still has vaguely defined publishing rights to Windows/PC ports of Final Fantasy titles, actually. I don't know the details of the initial agreement, though. I've been trying to get an inside contact at Eidos to discuss that (as it pertains to getting their PC ports running on other platforms). If SE ends up buying them out, I wouldn't be surprised if we finally saw some more FF7/FF8 ports popping up on other platforms. Eidos did a lot of work in making those codebases more manageable and high-level.

as far as I know, in the financial world, just because WB owns a lot of eidos doesn't make it more likely that they would buy it. they could just as easily be the ones pushing for it to be sold, so they can get out of it and make some money.

that drops me back to EA being the buyer, because EA is the biggest and most likely to buy things!

I kind of hope its Warners since there seem to be developing a fairly smart gaming company. EA will just strip it of choice IP andUbi will just screw it up. Not sure what Square would do.

teh worm has turned , hehe

I would hazard a guess that Steam accounts for at a minimum 15% of all game sales.

Daikatana strikes again!

**waves at EA hiding behind the curtain**

I guess Eidos won't be publishing the Omikron 2. :-(