Sony In “High Board Level Discussions” To Acquire Grand Theft Auto Publisher’s Parent Company Take-Two – Rumor

You know how Microsoft has been going around acquiring a whole bunch of major developers to try and bolster their first party, which has fallen immensely behind relative to Sony and Nintendo? Well, it looks like Sony may be gearing up to do something to regain their lead—if this newest rumor, which should be taken with a huge grain of salt, is to be believed.

Joel Kulina, head of technology and media trading at Wedbush Securities, has reported (via MarketWatch) that Sony is currently in high level discussions to acquire Take-Two Interactive, the parent company of Rockstar and 2K Games—the publishers of titles such as Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, Civilization, XCOM, and NBA 2K. The deal is apparently going to be “mostly cash”, which sounds a bit absurd, because attempting to purchase a company valued as high as Take-Two in mostly cash would deplete a massive portion of Sony Corp.’s (not PlayStation, all of Sony’s) cash reserves in one fell swoop—but maybe Sony feels that’s worth the risk of having Grand Theft Auto be exclusive to their machine.

To me, this sounds extremely unlikely, especially given Take-Two’s previous assertions that they want to be everywhere where there are customers—which going exclusive to just one console would go against. Unless Sony were to allow Take-Two games on all platforms, in which case… what’s the point? Revenue, I assume.

For now, this is a rumor, and treat it as such. But hey, things are getting interesting regardless.