GamePro: Microsoft may buy Epic Games

Gears of War does an illegal operation
Think independent game developers, and Epic comes to mind. One of the industry’s veterans, Epic is known for their Unreal franchise, as well as their famed Gears of War. But GamePro magazine predicts that this is about to change and monster publisher Microsoft Games will buy Epic eventually.

To find out more on the diabolical deal of doom, hit the jump!

Assistant Editor at GamePro, Travis Moses predicts that Microsoft will buy Epic for $1 Billion – a fairly large amount. The deal will eventually be very profitable for Microsoft – as it is, we have rumours of Gears of War 2 (which is pretty inevitable anyways). In addition, there is the Unreal Tournament line, which Epic has said they will never discontinue.

But the biggest cash cow is of course, the Unreal engine. Epic is more known for selling the engine to every game developer imaginable. Dozens (if not hundreds) of games, right from the lowliest of indies to the poshest of the A-level titles (BioShock, if you will) use it. Microsoft would be able to rake in royalties for this easily.

Plus, after Bungie’s independence, Microsoft is short of a stable FPS-games developer. And every publisher needs one. The whole affair will go much like the Microsoft-Bungie deal that lasted a long time anyways. This also goes with the line that game developer acquisitions have been big for the past few months, such as EA’s acquisition of Pandemic and BioWare and Activision merging with Vivendi (or rather, Blizzard).

This is scary indeed. Who knows what nefarious deeds could occur out of such an acquisition? We are only left to speculate… and hope.

[Via WRAL]

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