INTERNATIONAL_ Take-Two Interactive buys production company Zynga for $12.7 billion, making it the largest acquisition in world gaming history.
The acquisition will be more than $4 billion when Tencent acquires Supercell for $8.6 billion; $5 billion more than the $7.5 billion acquisition of Skyrim’s parent company from producer Bethesda Softworks.
After the acquisition, Take-Two owns the operating process for all the popular Zynga games like FarmVille, Words With Friends and High Heels.
Take-Two’s acquisition of Zynga created an earthquake in the gaming market.
These series and games will be added to Take-Two’s own list of franchises including Grand Theft Auto, NBA 2K and Civilization. But perhaps more importantly, Take-Two now draws on Zynga’s expertise in building free-to-play mobile titles to create new hit games.
In fact, Zynga will be the new brand for Take-Two’s mobile game segment. Zynga’s current CEO, Frank Gibeau, will retain leadership of the organization.
In the past, some of the biggest publishers have bought game companies for huge sums like with Activision Blizzard buying King (making Candy Crush) for $5.9 billion in 2015. EA bought producer Kim Kardashian : Hollywood, Glu, and Playdemic in 2021.
“We saw huge potential in mobile games, so we were driven by the acquisition and acquisition of Zynga,” said Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick.
The Zynga acquisition doesn’t mean Take-Two will bring its franchise to mobile for the first time, as right now you can download and play Grand Theft Auto III, Vice City and San Andreas on your phone. me. It belongs to the long term plan.
Zynga owns the hit FarmVille series.
Zynga is expected to break into the console gaming space with Star Wars: Hunters, which is coming to Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android this year. Take-Two plans to use Zynga’s Chartboost advertising platform to “more effectively engage new users and optimize mobile inventory.”
Following the acquisition, Take-Two will begin expanding its most important franchises, lucrative free-to-play mobile games. While we don’t know exactly when the first games from Take-Two/Zynga’s IP games will come to mobile, the acquisition means GTA is fully available to mobile one day.
