Earlier this month, it was reported that Microsoft was planning on purchasing Warner Bros. Interactive — publisher of popular series like Mortal Kombat, Batman: Arkham, and Harry Potter — although nothing official was actually confirmed.
According to information revealed by CNBC, Warner Bros. Interactive's parent company AT&T was looking to sell the video game publisher for around $4 billion in order to service a debt of $200 million, and this is where Microsoft comes in, as they allegedly showed interesting in purchasing the company.
Reports also claimed that it wasn't just Microsoft that was interested in acquiring the publisher, as other companies like Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take Two Interactive were also revealed to have taken interest in Warner Bros. Interactive.
During Electronic Arts' Q1 earnings call, Chief Operating Officer Blake Jorgensen revealed that the company has always shown interest in purchasing other businesses, although he doesn't specifically mention Warner Bros. Interactive; the timing, however, suggests that this may be the case.
"It is very rare that we don't get a chance to look at anything that’s up for sale. You can imagine people call us and say, 'we're thinking about selling a business' or 'we're thinking about selling ourselves.' We are a place that a lot of people want to come as a long-term home if they decide to sell their business. So we get to look at almost everything," Jorgensen explained.
"I can't comment on any specific acquisition other than what I will tell you is, as you've seen in the past, where we've done the best is where we have long-term relationships with people, and we're really trying to buy great talent versus games."
Jorgensen gives an example of this by mentioning Respawn Entertainment — the studio that last year gave us the critically acclaimed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order — and how this is the kind of studios Electronic Arts are after when it comes to acquiring new talents.
"It wasn't about Titanfall – and that's no offense to Titanfall, it's an amazing game and we'll maybe see a Titanfall at some point sometime down the road – but it was really about the team and it starts at the top with Vince but it goes all the way through the whole organization.
"So we're always looking at that. We'll always continue to look at that. We would hope we can find more. Our hope was is that some of the challenges in our broad world economy would actually make people think and understand that being sub-scale is difficult, but at the same time as you've seen from our results, I think everybody's going to do well in the next couple of quarters in our industry.
"And so it might take some time, but trust that we are more interested than ever because we see talent and building great new franchises is critical to the long-term growth for business," Jorgensen explained.
There have been far too many rumours surrounding the acquisition of Warner Bros. Interactive. While there may be many potential buyers out there, at this point it seems like it could be anybody's guess which company will end up securing the buyout. Hopefully we'll get some official news regarding this particular topic soon.