News Corp. eyeing Eidos?

[Bonobo]

(From Gamespot.com)The big difference with the latest batch of Eidos-takeover scuttlebutt is that it involves News Corporation. In recent months, the massive multimedia conglomerate, which already owns DirecTV, Sky TV, TV Guide, The New York Post, HarperCollins Publishers, and the Fox film studio and television networks, has been quite public about its desire to break into the game industry.

Given News Corp.'s size--it kicked off its 2005 financial year with a $536 million first-quarter profit, more than double Eidos' entire FY04 annual income of $241 million--a buyout of the cash-strapped, IP-rich Eidos would be a piece of cake. Such a move would also seem in character for News Corp. chairman and CEO K. Rupert Murdoch, who has championed an aggressive acquisition strategy since founding the company in Australia more than two decades ago. It would also likely be a preemptive strike against News Corp.'s archrival Viacom, whose own CEO, Sumner Redstone, owns nearly 80 percent of Midway Games and is moving aggressively to reenergize the publisher. (It would also be ironic, given Viacom-owned Paramount Pictures produced both Tomb Raider films.)

So Rupert is going into games. Eidos will just be the beginning...