Investor Guy Adami says there’s “chatter” that Apple is interested in acquiring publishing giant Electronic Arts, sparking what may be the most interesting rumor of the day.
The comment appeared in a report on TheStreet.com, which wrote, “Adami noted that there is chatter that Apple is eyeing Electronic Arts as a takeover target.” Not a lot of meat on that bone until you consider as well that Apple has also recently picked up executives from other companies who have noteworthy backgrounds in videogames.
Richard Teversham, formerly the senior director for insights and strategy at Microsoft’s Xbox Business (who comes up with these titles?), left the company to join Apple this week and prior to that Apple hired Bob Drebin, the chief technologist at AMD’s graphics group and also the man who created the graphics processor in the Nintendo GameCube.
Forbes says those signings, in conjunction with a major investment in Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR, signal a major move on the handheld gaming business through the iPhone and iPod Touch. But if the Electronic Arts rumor is true then Apple’s gaming ambitions would appear to go far beyond just the handheld market; assuming control of the second-largest independent videogame publisher in the world would give Apple an immediate and major presence in the game industry that it has never been able to establish on its own.
Source: Edge
