Xbox 360 Fanboy

Lazard Capital Markets' Colin Sebastian issued a note on EA's financial statement last night claiming new information regarding the buyout of Take-Two Interactive would be forthcoming Monday. Sebastian, a known analyst with his ear to the "gaming industry grindstone," has been at the forefront of comments regarding a possible EA buyout since the first offer was made in April.

"Expect [an] update on TTWO bid by Monday morning," Sebastian noted. "We continue to believe that the current offer of $25.74 per share would be accretive to earnings for Electronic Arts, as well as fill several meaningful product gaps."

Last month EA extended its tender offer deadline from April 30 to May 16. The offer, if approved, would see Electronic Arts purchase Take-Two Interactive, publishers of the critical and commercial blockbuster Grand Theft Auto IV, for $2 billion. Expect the internet to burst into flames Monday if Sebastian's claim comes to fruition.

[via Videogaming247]

Anyone who wasn't lucky enough to experience the closed beta of the slightly controversial EA first-person comedy-shooter (not kidding), Battlefield: Bad Company, will soon have their chance. Today EA announced that a demo for the DICE developed title will hit the Xbox Live Marketplace and PSN on June 5. The single and multiplayer demo promises to showcase what was in the beta as well as the wacky characters found in the campaign mode. Gamers who decide to pre-order the title from select retailers will be treated an early download of the demo beginning May 29.

For those at home keeping score you'll remember pre-ordering and playing the demo will give gamers access to two of the five controversial weapons found in the beta. Pre-ordering gives gamers access to the QBU88 Sniper Rifle while downloading and playing the demo nets players the UZI Submachine Gun.

Battlefield: Bad Company ships on June 25.

A new trailer for FaceBreaker has been released, this time featuring a deadly ninja warrior by the name of ... Steve. It turns out Steve isn't quite a ninja master per se, but rather a quadruple black belt in ninja boxing. He is also apparently the regional quest master of his Wizards & Lizards guild. In other words, he's the nerd who thinks he's a badass (think Napoleon Dynamite's brother, only fat). If FaceBreaker can keep its sense of humor and be fun to play, we'll be mighty happy.

Eons ago, when many of you were in diapers, Shawn Fanning developed a program called Napster. The program was widely praised for its ability to allow users to trade media with each other freely. Eventually the music industry caught up to Fanning and Napster and the whole thing, as they say, is history.

Fast-forward to today. According to a report on Techcrunch, Fanning is poised to sign away his new company, the co-founded gaming social networking site Rupture, to publishing powerhouse Electronic Arts for $30 million. According to the story, Fanning and fellow Rupture founder Jon Baudanza will retain positions within EA and further speculates that EA has purchased the site for its data and stat tracking technology that allows users to chat and share gathered information with Rupture subscribers.

What's that old saying? Oh yeah. Big brother is watching you! Look out behind you! We can't believe you fell for that dude.

[via BigDownload]

GameVideos (which has received a huge makeover, by the way) has posted a new trailer for FaceBreaker, the upcoming cartoon boxer from EA. The video serves as an introduction to Romeo, a svelte Spanish boxer with a voice that lands somewhere between Antonio Banderas and Family Guy's Mr. Weed. Perhaps more importantly, the video gives us a peek at how FaceBreaker will actually play. Assuming what's seen in the video is actually taken from gameplay, you can expect to occasionally launch foes completely off the mat. In the video, Romeo repeatedly launches foes high in the air and lands another crushing blow as they plummet back to the canvas. We have to admit, it looks like it could be a lot of fun. Given the pedigree of EA Canada (Fight Night Round 3), we're hopeful that it will be.

Sure, the Xbox 360 gets Peter Jackson to helm its games, but EA nabbed Steven Spielberg, which is nothing to sneeze at. Undoubtedly one of the biggest stories in gaming over the last year is his involvement with Electronic Arts to produce Boom Blox for the Wii. Inspired by good old-fashioned toy blocks, the game has players manipulating blocks in a 3D environment complete with impressive physics ... and explosions apparently. It's a puzzle game, see? Anywho, word on the street, according to VideoGamer.com, is that Boom Blox -- which began solely as a Wii project -- may find its way onto other consoles as well. The news comes from the game's senior producer Amir Rahimi, who said at a recent event in London, "there's definitely the possibility of going to other consoles."

Sure, it's not an explicit confirmation of a 360 version, but given EA's history, we'd say it's a safe bet assuming the game actually does go multiplatform at some point. The only question now is how the game would work without a motion controller ... oh wait.

[Via Joystiq]

We're a little late on this news (we blame Call of Duty 4, wholeheartedly), but cover it we must for it concerns what may be the biggest release of 2008. Yes, Grand Theft Auto IV. Michael Pachter of Wedbush Morgan has a somewhat worrisome prediction regarding EA's courtship of Take Two. In a recent episode of Bonus Round, Pach-Attack noted, "I think if EA takes over Take-Two, they have an economic incentive to delay [Grand Theft Auto IV]." The reason for this, naturally, would be to debut GTAIV during the much more lucrative holiday season at the end of the year (as was the original plan for 2007). Pachter says that Take Two can't afford to delay the game on their own because they "need the money."

So there you go. If you didn't have a vested interest in the EA / Take Two saga, you do now (assuming you want some sweet, sweet GTAIV anyway). Let's look on the bright side though. If EA does buy Take Two, that means the Iron Man movie still has a fighting chance, right? In the meantime, GTAIV is still scheduled to release at the end of this month.

You might have heard this crazy rumor that Electronic Arts is trying to buy Take Two Interactive and if you haven't, welcome back to civilization. The merger got our family over at Joystiq to thinking, what exactly makes up the Take Two family tree? Diving deep into our library of research materials, Joystiq has examined and dissected all of the assets up for grabs in a possible Take Two buyout.

You may be surprised to see how many development teams call Take Two home. Other than obvious dev teams at Rockstar and 2K Boston, checking out this family album makes EA's acquisition anxiousness all the more understandable!

Head to Joystiq and take a gander at the Take Two family album

Rockers everywhere, take note: Amazon is currently offering the Rock Band Special Edition -- which includes the game, microphone, drums, and guitar -- for $147.99. As Amazon notes, that's $22 (or 13%) off the regular price of $169.99. These kinds of deals tend to sell out quick, so all the frugal virtuosos out there had best jump on it. No, seriously, why are you still here? Go get some cheap Rock Band.

Update: It looks like the lag still persists even when calibration settings seem to be correct. We've contacted Harmonix for more information.

We're receiving reports that the new title update for Rock Band -- the one that introduced the music store -- is creating some unforeseen problems. Specifically, the patch seems to create some on screen lag not present before the patch. We tested it this morning (we also noticed it over the weekend). Sure enough, there was some lag present and many notes were missed. Before everyone starts running around screaming bloody murder, you should know that the lag is completely fixable.

Essentially, all the patch does is throw Rock Band's calibration settings out of whack. As the video above notes, the Standard CRT setting defaults to a lag of 0ms. For whatever reason, the patch alters this setting. The solution? Change it back to the way it was. It's not even necessary to manually calibrate. Just select the setting that you had before and you should be good to go. Crisis averted.

[Thanks, Mike McD]

Update: Forum MODs have just confirmed for us that this was an April Fool's joke. That's strange though because we could have sworn it was still March. Thanks for wasting every body's time!

Confident they'll soon be the owners of all things Take Two Interactive, Electronic Arts has made a push to acquire GTANet.com, one of the largest Grand Theft Auto communities online (which is comprised of 11 different GTA based websites). According to reports, EA has acquired the site, including all domains associated and all statistical information about its members (as listed in the above email scan from EA to GTANet owners found by WhatIfGaming), for $3.4 million as of March 22.

If true, Electronic Arts would have one of the largest databases of information of any Grand Theft Auto community available. Speculation aside, we wonder how important this information is to EA if they were to acquire Take Two.

While the owners of the GTANet have not posted an official confirmation on the matter, the GTAForums.com logo has been changed to incorporate the EA insignia adding fuel to the fire. With this supposed acquisition we wonder Take Two acquisition press release is being edited as we speak.

[Thanks, Chris]
[Read, full email scan]
[Read, GTAForums New Logo]

Speaking to the BBC, EA chief executive John Riccitiello was clear that the primary interest EA has in acquiring Take Two Interactive is the company's strong roster of development teams, specifically that of Rockstar Games.

"The big headline here is that our primary interest is in Rockstar and the intellectual properties around Rockstar," Riccitiello said as the April 29 release of Grand Theft Auto IV looms in the distance. Sports gamers have long stated their frustration with the attempted acquisition because it would remove EA's only competitor in the simulation-sports market. Riccitello explained that the sports angle was a secondary thought, "sports games are secondary consideration here," he explained.

While Take Two had declined the initial offer from EA for $2 billion, the acquisition has recently gone hostile. In order to purchase the company from under Take Two executives, EA has put in a cash tender offer to purchase all outstanding shares of common stock for $26 each on last Thursday targeting shareholders. Take Two executives have since asked shareholders to hold out on the offer, which is set to expire on April 11 - a mere 18 days before the launch of the GTAIV cash-cow. With the news that EA is targeting new shareholders that are looking to unload a headache, this news looks to get more interesting by the day.

[Read, Joystiq]
[Read, Next Gen]

Not long after its release, it was discovered that Army of Two featured a regional lockout that prevented from playing with other parts of the world. In other words, players in North America, Europe, and Asia, have to be content to play with themselves. Hard-nosed problem solvers that they are, the fine folks at Joystiq got to the bottom of the issue by sticking the question to EA directly. The response from Reid Schneider, senior producer of Army of Two: the regional lockout was implemented to prevent slow connections. It seems that Army of Two requires comparable connection speeds from all users in order to properly sync up gameplay animations. As a result, someone with a slow connection can "bring down" the rest of a group, causing less than desirable play. Thus, the lockout was born. In an interesting note, the Asian version of the game is region locked for an entirely different reason: it doesn't allow players to shoot corpses. Attempting to make this feature compatible with the other versions over over Xbox Live caused the game to "fail."

So there you have it. There is a dim glow of hope at the end of the tunnel though, as EA is "actively looking into" finding a way to allow cross regional play while still eliminating slow connections.

Another UEFA tournament equals another UEFA game of course! While that may seem like the extent of our math skills we can say for sure that Electronic Arts have released 8 screens of the stadiums being used in UEFA Soccer 2008. So far it looks as if EA has successfully recreated the stadiums from the Austria and Switzerland hosted event. All we can say is, GOOOOOOOOOOOAL! Sorry, we had to.