Running Out Of Time

In Telegraph, Andrew Murray-Watson wrote about the difficulties that Eidos is facing in its quest to find a buyer. I write some of my thoughts, based on that article. Eidos first announced its intentions in July. After that, they have had to update the negotiations status for several times. The sale drags on and on, nobody’s buying.

Eidos has one of the most celebrated game characters in their stables. That character is heroine Lara Croft, she has been busy in movies and advertising world. Championship Manager and Hitman are titles, which many would like to have. Commercial success for all these titles hasn’t been that stunning lately. Actually it has been almost disappointing. Anyway, all this visibility and Eidos has not been able to find a buyer.

Look at the stock price, back in 1999 company was valued to be worth of 1,5 billion pounds. Nowadays Eidos is valued around 100 million pounds. Quite a discount and still nobody makes the move.

Could it be so that buyers are just deliberately stalling their decisive moves, because it is evident that the stock price is in downward spiral? The longer the workers at Eidos feel that their jobs are threatened, the worse job they will do. All that pressure and hurry will have its mark on the job. What is the sense in stalling? In the end, it will be very cheap to buy the intellectual rights that the company has and put some new guys to lead projects. Just that this tactics has come to an end. News Corporation is out there and it can’t afford to wait for too long. They also need the people at Eidos, not just the rights, which could be fine with Electronic Arts. Which of the companies will make their move first?

I bet that the owners of Eidos will try to salvage what they can and sell to News Corp. (given that they are willing to buy) to get decent price and relatively free hands in game development, after all News Corp. doesn’t have that much expertise on that area. So, my guess is that before the summer, someone will be buying...