UPDATE: CNBC’s David Faber has stated that he hasn’t heard of such a deal being made, casting doubts over the initial report that Amazon was buying EA.
Amazon is set to announce that it is acquiring EA, a new report has claimed. The company is allegedly set to reveal that it has put in a formal offer, following weeks of rumors surrounding Electronic Arts’ potential acquisition.
In a report from USA Today’s GLHF, the outlet claims that the acquisition will be announced later today. But what does this mean for EA, and why is Amazon looking to buy the publisher?
What Amazon’s EA purchase means for its games
Amazon purchasing EA raises questions about how its games will be handled in the future. Currently, EA enjoys a working relationship with Xbox’s Game Pass service, with EA Play being included with PC Game Pass and Ultimate at no additional cost. Amazon has its own Cloud Luna service, so could this mean that EA Play will leave Game Pass and instead be funneled into Luna?
There are also questions raised about how exactly this partnership will benefit both parties. EA is one of the powerhouses of gaming, but its recent history has been hit-and-miss. Apex Legends has been a huge success, and its sports titles continue to be bank-rollers — even if physical sales of FIFA dropped tremendously over the years (via PlayStation LifeStyle). But its fumbling of the Star Wars license — most notably Star Wars Battlefront 2’s hugely controversial launch and its shuttering of Visceral Games — hinted at a huge mismanagement issue within the company.
Amazon has had similar problems. Its Amazon Games arm has mostly pushed out misfires, canceling hero-shooter Crucible after it flopped at launch, binning the multiplayer brawler Breakaway two years after its 2016 announcement, and also allegedly canning a planned The Lord of the Rings MMO. Its one true success story, Lost Ark, wasn’t developed by its in-house Amazon Games studios, with Amazon instead serving as the Western publisher for the South Korean MMO.
Amazon’s struggle in the gaming space and EA’s management issues mean that this is a potentially troubling pairing, as Amazon is potentially looking to buy its way into a better position in the industry, through a publisher that is having its own troubles.
How Amazon could use EA for Prime Video
A potentially more successful pairing for Amazon and EA could be through the former’s Prime Video service. EA has a number of IPs that would translate well to streaming shows or films, including Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Even properties such as The Sims have the potential to stretch their legs outside of video games.
Amazon using EA’s IPs to bolster its Prime Video line-up, just as Netflix did with the hugely successful The Witcher series and the (notably less successful) Resident Evil show, could be the main gameplan here.
But with that being said, of all the gaming publishers out there, EA arguably doesn’t have the best line-up of properties that would translate well to film and TV. Given that the publisher is mostly focused on sports titles, while a Mass Effect series would certainly have the potential to rival the popularity of Netflix’s The Witcher, it’s likely that this acquisition would center around EA’s games. We’ll just have to wait and see exactly how that plays out.
