Last updated on March 9, 2021
The company behind Rockstar Games plans to take over the British developer studio Codemasters (Formula 1, Dirt 5).
Artwork of Dirt 5
(Picture: Codemasters)
The New York publisher Take Two has confirmed reports of a planned acquisition of Codemasters. There are indeed well advanced talks between the companies, the takeover price would be around 973 million US dollars. However, it has not yet been finally clarified whether the purchase will take place.
Codemasters’ shares are traded on the stock exchange, so that a sufficient number of shareholders would have to approve the deal – which is what Codemasters’ management is recommending. Until then, however, further negotiations, audits and the like are still ongoing.
Codemasters was founded in 1986 by Richard and David Darling. The development studio is specialized in racing games like grid and formula 1. They have just launched Dirt 5, which will be available for these new platforms with the launch of Xbox Series X/S and Playstation 5.
reasons for the takeovers are not given – it is not very likely that Take Two will rely on Codemasters’ expertise to drive the next Grand Theft Auto, for which its subsidiary Rockstar Games is responsible.
Take Two is hardly visible in public, but rather through Rockstar Games and its other brands Private Division and 2K Games. The company is financially as well as most other game companies relatively well at the moment.
At the beginning of November 2020, Take Two had published its quarterly figures, according to which it recorded sales of 841 million US dollars (previous year’s quarter: 858 million US dollars) and a net profit of 99 million US dollars (previous year’s quarter: 72 million US dollars) for the months July to September 2020.
According to Take Two, this is mainly due to the continued success of GTA 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2 and their multiplayer modes, as well as new titles like the sports simulation NBA 2K21 and the Mafia Trilogy. There are also no serious rumors about GTA 6, which hasn’t been officially announced yet,
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