Report: Saudi Arabia PIF Looking to Merge EA With Savvy to Form Global Gaming Juggernaut
After the record-breaking $55-billion acquisition of Electronic Arts (EA) by the Saudi Arabia PIF (Public Investment Fund), some wondered if anything major would change with the publisher, and it seems it’ll be an even bigger change than expected.
Aside from preparing mass layoffs after the acquisition, a new report has surfaced stating that the Saudi Arabian buyers are now looking to merge EA with another massive game company, Savvy Games.
The goal here is to create one of the biggest gaming powerhouses in the world.
Saudi Arabia Group Seeks to Merge EA With Pokemon Go Owner
The report comes from Bloomberg (paywalled), who cites that executives at the Saudi Arabia PIF are weighing plans to “create one of the world’s biggest gaming firms to ensure better coordination between its assets.” The info comes from people who declined to be identified, given the information and plans are confidential.
There’s no final decision reached yet, and it’s highly unlikely to happen until Savvy completes its $6 billion acquisition of Chinese mobile gaming company Moonton.
While Savvy Games isn’t a household name, it is a giant in the mobile gaming scene, and has used $39 billion allocated by the PIF to buy mobile game publisher Scopely for $4.9 billion, and the game busines of Niantic for $3.5 billion.
If this deal goes through, this presents a major shift in the structure of the Saudi Arabia group’s gaming strategy. Of course, it’s not as cut-and-dry as mergers as big as this do need to pass regulatory examinations and antitrust inquiries.
The upside for this for EA, is it would enable the publisher to potentially carve a large piece of the mobile gaming pie with the help of Savvy. For the longest time, EA’s strengths have been in console and PC gaming, with the mobile division of the publisher failing to produce its own Candy Crush-esque hit that rival Activision-Blizzard profits heavily from every year.
Same as with any report, take this with a grain of salt for now. That said, Bloomberg has been spot-on with these things, and for now, it’s a matter of waiting to see whether this comes to fruition or not.
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