Hi everyone. I haven't blogged in a little while so I thought that I would stop by and say hi.

HI.

Ok, now that I got that out of the way, I wanted to tell you guys about this wacky rumor I read on the internets. Earlier there was a rumor about some Dreamcast games being playable on the PS3 and it appeared to be blog worthy, so I feel this is justified.

It looks like Microsoft is in the mood to buy things again. Remember that one time they wanted to buy Yahoo but it all fell apart? Crazy times for sure.

Yeah... well this time around they are interested in acquiring EA of all things. Read it here. So yeah I know it is just an internet rumor on N4G.com, but it brings up some interesting thoughts. Yes I know this kind of thing gets brought up a lot, like EA wanting to purchase Take-Two, but I am going to talk about it anyway. You can leave if you have no interest. So having said that, what do you think would happen in this situation if it became reality? I for one don't find it very likely due to the fact that EA makes a lot of damn money on their multiplatform yearly sports games and their newer IPs (Internet Protocols for you Wall Street folks) like Brutal Legend, Dead Space, Army of Two, Skate, and so on, but hey... who knows these days.

It is an interesting thought though and I did indeed think about it. If Microsoft were to acquire EA, what would happen to gaming as a whole? That would give Microsoft a large amount of products to claim as 1st party exclusives. If that happened, Madden fanatics would have to own a MS console just to play their precious game. I am curious as to whether or not MS and EA think that people would actually go through with that. That is a fairly large assumption that would possibly lead to people buying some Sega Sports knock-off football title and boycotting Madden altogether. Then again, I know a lot of people that own a gaming console just to play Madden, so maybe it's not all that crazy.

It also raises the question of whether or not the quality of the games would diminish or greatly increase. I think if it did happen, the quality of their games would increase. EA would not only have their own funding which is a rather large amount of money, but they would have Microsoft's immense pile of cash behind them as well. Developers would only have to focus on one platform, either having smaller teams cutting costs even more, or having games out sooner due to the amount of people able to work on them. Microsoft would push these developers to produce the best product possible to compete with Sony's first party lineup and other Microsoft first party developers would benefit from having access to EA's facilities and technology. There are definitely a lot of benefits for both MS and EA in this deal if it ever came to fruition.

So yeah... this is still just a rumor, I know. I know a lot of people will say that because EA produces games for every platform known to man, that this deal would actually be a bad move. I'm no expert, but I assume that producing games for that many platforms has to be pretty damn expensive. Still, EA makes a lot of money doing what they do now, so I have no idea if a deal like this would actually be beneficial or not.

Anyway, it is definitely an interesting thought and a look into the way things are going to be in the future. Are we going to see nonstop battling like this with the next consoles? It seems like every week now that Microsoft and Sony are pulling something trying to outdo each other. I know right now, at this particular point in time, that we are all benefiting from this--price drops, rebates, exclusive titles, new console models, package deals, etc., but when will it just get sickening... or will it at all? I am just hoping that the games never suffer from all of this crazy competition. Microsoft and Sony can fight over us all they want as long as they keep pumping out quality games in an attempt to seduce us to their side. If by Microsoft acquiring EA means that EA will produce truly amazing games, then so be it. That will only lead to Sony wanting to compete with them by creating, at least, equally stunning games. Everybody still wins.

Should be an interesting next few years.