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Rumor: Microsoft to Acquire Epic Games?
Yesterday a GamePro editor created quite the stir by speculating that Microsoft may be acquiring Epic Games for approximately $1 billion. While Microsoft would certainly be interested in Gears of War and Unreal Tournament, the majority of the buyout would certainly be for the Unreal Engine 3.
Of course this is all purely speculation – however, Microsoft is holding a briefing tomorrow (February 19) where they are expected to make a couple announcements, and Epic is having theirs on Thursday (February 20). Coincidence ... or the announcement of a big acquisition?
It's become quite a task in this industry to find out when a large company will be buying another, and most of the time any false accusations are almost immediately shot down by the smaller company. This is not the case in this incident, however. Epic Vice President Mark Rein told GamePro that if they wanted speculation, they should start out at least $2 billion as Epic wasn't going to be cheap.
What does this mean for gamers? Besides the fact that Microsoft would have a powerful engine licensed for all their future games (Unreal Engine 3) and Gears of War 2 and Unreal Tournament would certainly become Xbox 360 and PC exclusive. Or this could just be a crazy rumor and nothing more. Find out later this week.
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