Microsoft: Were not interested in buying Take Two

Microsoft Game Studios’corporate VP Shane Kim has said that the firm is not likely to challenge EA’s $2 billion acquisition bid for Take Two because MS ‘doesn’t have any past relationship’ with the firm and is put off by the price it would have to pay.

Answering GameDaily readers’ questions, Kim added that Microsoft wouldn’t have been interested in now EA-owned studios Bioware or Pandemic – which the publisher picked up for $860 million – for the same reason.

Kim was asked: ‘Why would MS not purchase BioWare / Pandemic? Why not make an offer to purchase Take-Two? Wouldn’t purchasing these two developers strengthen MS Game Studio’s position in developing firstparty games that would be MS exclusives?’

He replied: We have a tremendous amount of respect for our friends at BioWare and truly enjoyed our publishing relationship with that studio.

"However, we didn’t have any relationship or past experience working with Pandemic or Take-Two, so that is a major hurdle for us to overcome, especially at their prices.

"Without discussing the relative merits of each of those situations, I’ll just say that we’re not motivated by the actions of others and instead try to focus on the best places for us to invest our financial and human capital. There’s an awful lot you can do with $3 billion!”

In the same interview, Kim added that Microsoft had taken major steps to address the hardware issues experienced by our customers” and that Windows is still a very important part of our gaming business”.

To read the full interview, click here.