This year we’ve seen a few jaw-dropping gaming acquisitions, and the latest one between Take-Two and Zynga is no different. Take-Two announced its intentions to buy the mobile gaming giant Zynga in January, and the deal has just been completed for $12.7 billion.
Zynga is a powerful mobile gaming developer responsible for many popular games such as Words With Friends, Farmville and others. On the other hand, Take-Two is an established gaming company with massive game franchises such as Grand Theft Auto, BioShock and Civilizations. With this acquisition, Take-Two can start producing mobile games with the assistance of Zynga’s expertise in building hugely popular free-to-play mobile games.
It may seem odd that a successful gaming company would spend this amount on acquiring a mobile gaming giant. This is especially true when considering some of the other acquisitions announced this year, like Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard and Sony offering to buy Bungie. These gaming acquisitions are all PC or console game developers.
However, when looking at the revenue generated by mobile games, it doesn’t seem like such an odd move. Activision’s Call of Duty: Mobile was launched in October 2019 and has just surpassed $1.5 billion in lifetime revenue. PUBG Mobile also announced a lifetime revenue of $7 billion. So there is money to be made with well-developed mobile games, and Take-Two wants to get in on the action.
Take-Two mentioned in an investor presentation at the time the deal with Zynga was being negotiated that they plan to bring more of their franchises to the mobile platform. Does this mean we could see a Grand Theft Auto mobile game soon? Since we’re on this topic, have a look at whether Rockstar Games might remake GTA IV.
