When it was rumored the other day that Epic might be acquired by Microsoft, Epic’s Vice-President Mark Rein joked that they should start the bidding at $2 billion. Apparently Electronic Arts thought that price sounded about right for another big time company, Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two is the parent company of 2K Games and Rockstar. So, essentially, Electronic Arts might soon be the parent company of Bioshock and Grand Theft Auto.

While Electronic Arts continues to be the monster that ate everything in video game land, this move actually makes some sense for Take-Two. While occasional hits keep the company afloat, there have been many bombs and Rockstar has shown its only truly viable franchise to be Grand Theft Auto, with the possibility of Bully. Meanwhile, EA Sports has basically pushed 2K Sports to the point of starvation by acquiring exclusive rights to many popular sports leagues. 2K Sports does retain the exclusive third-party rights to Major League Baseball.

The $2 billion purchase price includes a 64 percent premium on Take-Two’s current stock price, which would make many shareholders and company executives very rich. While Take-Two might hope this could produce a bidding war for their services, the truth is there’s no other company out there right now likely to bid. Nintendo is too cheap, and Sony is still trying to recoup from their losses caused by the PS3’s development and first year. The only possible alternate bidder might be Microsoft, but in the past year they have seen keener on selling off studios than acquiring.

What about the future of Take-Two franchises? Such a deal would definitely mean the end of 2K Sports. The potential bright spot is the folding in of its development teams and technologies into EA Sports’ franchises. Bioshock would almost certainly continue as a franchise, but the team would be reunited with Electronic Arts, the current holder of the System Shock license. This would mean good news to those who still hold out hope for a System Shock 3. Grand Theft Auto would be the crown jewel, however. Gamers could expect it to get the full AAA treatment from Electronic Arts the same as it does now. It’s simply too valuable of a franchise to let fade away. However, one could also expect the amount of pay downloadable content to skyrocket.

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2. Sega spurs talks of a potential takeover
3. EA Sports has eight titles headed for Wii