Take this with a with a grain of salt, but the intertubes are buzzing with rumours that Apple is going to acquire Electronic Arts, the world"s second largest gaming company. Yup, Twitter isn"t the only one they are going after apparently.
Guy Adami, host of the CNBC show Fast Money, recently spoke this morning about how some "chatter" is taking place.
Rumours like this are not uncommon, especially when a company has about 29 billion in abundant cash flow and people try to guess what they are going to do with that money. But does this move even make sense?
While EA in 2007 said that they will start to release gaming titles on the Apple platform, support as been lukewarm at best. And with the popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch as a portable gaming platform only growing maybe Apple is ready to join the gaming business in a big way. Apple has also hired two new employees, Bob Drebin, who was in charge of the Nintendo Gamecube"s graphics processing unit, and former Xbox strategy boss Richard Treversham. All of which adds a little bit of lighter fluid to the rumour.
Could you imagine a AAA title being an Apple exclusive? Battlefield (insert latest iteration number here) only for OSX... I can hear the fanboys crying now. Remember Halo, and how it was going to be a Mac exclusive game until Microsoft came along, maybe Apple is trying to go back to those days when game developers respected their operating system as a viable gaming platform.
Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter had this to say: "Sounds retarded to me... Apple could buy Warner Music for around $3 billion, and control 20 percent of all recorded music. That makes more sense to their current business model than buying EA for more than twice that, doesn"t it?"