Group behind GTA 5 wants to buy FarmVille company – Offers more than for Bethesda

23,5 Mal Red Dead Redemption 2 – 48-Mal GTA 5

How much money is that $ 12.7 billion for Zynga is an enormous sum. The development costs for Red Dead Redemption 2 are estimated at around $ 540 million. Take-Two could have used the money they pay for Zynga to finance such a major project around 23 times (via screenrant).

Red Dead Redemption 2 is considered to be one of the best games of all time.

GTA 5 is said to have cost “only” 265 million US dollars. So that would have been almost 48 times in for the money. (via metro)

Apparently the extremely high price that Take-Two offers for Zynga caused the “Take-Two” share to fall on the market.

Why is Take-Two doing this? In essence, they are saying: Buying Zynga promises them about $ 500 million in revenue per year in the future that they would not otherwise make.

With the purchase of the company, they would now have a “clear path” to bring their series of games, which previously only ran for PC and consoles, to mobile devices. In the next few years, 50% or more of Take-Two’s revenue is expected to come from mobile. GTA 5 has been the big hit here over the past few years.

With the purchase of Zynga, Take-Two acquires a catalog of mobile games such as FarmVille, Words with Friends, CSR Racing, Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells and many more. Then there is the technology and the data of the companies. In addition, access to Zynga’s NFT / blockchain technology.

“I hate that mobile gaming makes so much money”

How is this discussed? It is discussed relatively calmly on reddit and examined from a business perspective. Only a few of the top comments are those that seem hotter:

• A user says. “That is almost twice as much as what Microsoft paid for Bethesda – it just shows how much money there is in the mobile market”
• “Now two of the largest gaming companies, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two, own two of the largest mobile studios in the world, King and Zynga.”
• “I hate that mobile gaming makes so much money and there are maybe 3 mobile games that are worth playing and almost all of the good ones are just ports.”

Most of all, one is amazed at how much money the deal is about. In retrospect, Activision Blizzard’s purchase of King (Candy Crush) looks like a bargain, they say.

Don’t you guys have any phones?

This is behind it: The deal shows the breadth of the gaming market and that gaming is developing in different directions:

• On the one hand there are AAA games that explore the limits of what is feasible and create virtual worlds in which games have almost unlimited possibilities. They are milestones in the genre such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Skyrim or GTA Online.
• On the other hand, there are games that rely on simple game principles, grind mechanics and microtransactions.

Both types of game exist in the same economic cosmos, even if they appeal to different target groups. In the last few years and probably still now, many fans of classic PC and console games have seen the danger that “their games” will perish or be neglected in favor of casual games.

You could see that in reactions to the announcement of Diablo Immortal at a BlizzCon 2018. But the situation seems to have calmed down a bit. The fact that companies like Take-Two make such investments for insane sums of money seems to be the new normal.

This fight for the “only true gaming”, PC and console gaming, appears again and again, but it has cooled noticeably.

Many fans would like to see GTA 6 as the next big project from Take-Two:

GTA 6: That’s what rumors say about the release, announcement and setting