June 24th, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | No Comments »
Following a bid of 33 Million for Midway, Warner Bros is eyeballing yet another big games publisher for an acquisition. Is Warner building their own mega games company? Could Glu be next?
Warner has not responded to the rumours on Joystiq yet, but Codemasters has already been building games based on Warner IP (which where at the Warner booth on the E3) and it is no secret that Warner is building up a gaming empire. On GamesIndustry, they contacted Codemasters about the rumours.
"We won't respond to that story," said a spokesperson at Codemasters. "Everything is fine here."
Previously, Warner also made a bid for Eidos. It pulled back however when Square-Enix came in and made an aggressive tender to acquire the company. As a result, Eidos went up as part of Square-Enix a few months ago with Warner's approval.
Codemasters has just completed an acquisition of Swordfish Games themselves, making them a nice big fish for Warner.
When it comes to mobile, Codemasters games are published by Glu. Warner Bros also has a strategic publishing deal with Glu. With Glu's share prices rising lately (mostly due to acquisition rumours), Glu could be an ideal acquisition target for Warner Bros as well.