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Microsoft to Acquire Epic Games? Could Happen ...

February 18, 2008 in News comments 9

Will Microsoft acquire Epic Games? According to Travis Moses, assistant editor at GamePro, Microsoft will purchase Epic Games for an epic total of $1 billion dollars. This acquisition could happen as early as this summer.

As Epic’s management team heads west for the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco this week, GamePro magazine is predicting that Microsoft will buy the fast-growing game technology firm.

“Microsoft will buy Epic Games for $1 billion this summer,” wrote Travis Moses, assistant editor at GamePro, in the magazine’s new issue.

Epic and Microsoft are practically joined at the hip already. Microsoft’s game publisher division paid Epic millions of dollars to develop the award-winning “Gears of War” in November of 2006 for the Xbox 360 platform.
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  • 0
    iLLmatic Feb 19, 08
    Microsoft has been on a monopoly spree again lately with purchasing Danger, an attempt at Yahoo, rumors of HTC, and now Epic. Just another thing people don't like about the empire.
  • 1
    VeGiTAX2 Feb 19, 08
    Odd that Gamepro ignores the current publishing agreement already underway with Midway games that has been going on for quite some time and which shows investment by Midway into the development of the UT3 engine which is a massively licensed cash cow letting epic sit and do pretty much whatever they want at this point.

    Epic seems to not be in a hurry to go anywhere at all. GoW hardly constitutes them going in-house given the amount of developers from other publishing houses that have released exclusives on the 360. If GoW makes them joined at the hip then they're practically the child of Sony given the tech demo for UT3 was based on the PS3 hardware. Thought should be a pre-req for the authors at gamepro before they throw down things like this.
  • -2
    jmac353 Feb 19, 08
    This would be tragic! These companies need to stay independent and continue developing games on their own terms.
    • 0
      jmac353 Feb 20, 08
      Who the *bleep* would thumb me down for saying that?!
  • -1
    Existenz Feb 19, 08
    Epic will go downhill if this happened, i mean Bungie were a good developer until Microsoft took over and then they were forced to make Halo after Halo, its no wonder they left. If Microsoft do this then Epic are going to be a very poor developer within 3 years, and we will have GoW 4 by then and UT6 heh... But seriously bad bad move if this holds true, would be better to be on the PS3 to be honest, not because it is currently my format of choice but i like how Sony manages its first party talent, it doesn't force them to do anything and supports them 100%, its no coincidence that Epic are working with Sony on and PS3 exclusive, since Sony are good helpers.
    • -2
      Final Blade Feb 19, 08
      I have to agree with you, its just like how MS bought out Rare for 376 million dollars and they ended up being a failure with them, instead of the success they had with Nintendo.

      What makes great developers are ones that makes different video games instead of the same one after another just a sequel. I mean look at halo after the first one it practically went downhill from there and im a big halo fan, so to me it spoke volumes.

      I hope this doesn't happen.
    • -2
      Donnelly Feb 19, 08
      What an incredibly stupid comment.

      It's almost as if you want to be the next finalblade.

      Edit: LOL.
      I wrote that before finalblade replied.
      • 0
        ali3n Feb 19, 08
        Not really stupid, what he said was pretty much the truth.
        • 1
          VeGiTAX2 Feb 20, 08
          Actually it was amazingly silly.

          "its no coincidence that Epic are working with Sony on and PS3 exclusive, since Sony are good helpers."

          Actually, money talks, and Sony is dishing out an amount that got their attention. It has little to do with them being good helpers, it's not like Epic is struggling to figure out how to make a PS3 title, their engine was designed so third parties would have little if any issue working on the RSX and Cell.

          Making it sound like Epic is looking for a home to rest up in really belittles the company.

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