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Corporate Buyout Conspiracy Theories

Please don your tinfoil hats, we've got two Big Ones today.

First, merger news is nothing new in the Japanese game industry, everyone seems to be huddling together over there just to try and survive. Just in recent years we've seen Square and Enix, Sega and Sammy, the weird transformation process from SNK to SNK Playmore, etc. It seems another is in the process. Yesterday Square Enix coughed up something in the neighborhood of $600 Million to gain a stock majority in the legendary arcade and puzzle-game developer Taito. Details are sparse, but it seems pretty obvious that their goal is a full-on buyout, which would result in Taito becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary.

But . . why? One would assume that Squeenix wants an arcade presence, since the arcade industry isn't dead in Japan like it sadly is here in the US. And hey, if you're going to get an arcade presence, you'd might as well go with someone with experience. They probably also wouldn't mind getting their hands on the Lufia series, you know, since Squeenix doesn't already have more than enough RPG series right now. I don't really care what they do, a buyout of Taito means Taito might get some more funding and manpower, and that means we might end up getting more than just one Puzzle Bobble port devoid of innovation every year.

Back here stateside, it looks like News Corporation (parent of Fox, Fox News and no less than 8 million other outlets) wants to buy IGN. Nothing is official yet, but Rupert Murdoch & Co. have expressed serious interest in picking up IGN and the rest of IGN's vast sprawling network, which now includes RottenTomatoes, GameSpy, FilePlanet, and all 67,000 'planet' fansites. It isn't clear exactly what this would mean, or what kind of changes we'd see at IGN (if any), but I think it's fair to assume we'd no longer have to worry about the return of McIGN, and instead fear the unspeakable horrors of IGN: 'The Simple Life' edition, featuring giant obtrusive flash ads of a heavily-drugged dancing Paris Hilton.

It would also result in me cancelling my IGN subscription, because I like to avoid fueling News Corp whenever possible, but that's just me.

All this comes on the heels of IGN filing for their forthcoming IPO, which has resulted in all manner of financial analysts spewing forth their opinions on what IGN is worth, growth opportunities, and a whole bunch of other marketspeak I really don't feel like going into. Suffice to say, over the past week or so, people have been throwing around some hefty-big numbers, and places like News Corp love big numbers.

Sources: Next Generation, The Independent

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