Take-Two Completes Zynga Acquisition for $12.7 Billion

By Rollin Bishop

Take-Two Interactive has officially completed its acquisition of Zynga. The acquisition, described as a combination of the two companies, was first announced earlier this year and the deal is worth around $12.7 billion total with Take-Take purchasing the outstanding shares of Zynga. As noted when initially announced, a single company now houses Grand Theft Auto and FarmVille, making Take-Two Interactive a much larger participant in the mobile space.

"We are thrilled to complete our combination with Zynga, which is a pivotal step to increase exponentially our Net Bookings from mobile, the fastest-growing segment in interactive entertainment, while also providing us with substantial cost synergies and revenue opportunities," said Strauss Zelnick, Chairman and CEO of Take-Two, as part of the announcement of the deal closing. "As we bring together our exceptional talent, exciting pipelines of games, and industry-leading technologies and capabilities, we believe that we can take our portfolio to another level of creativity, innovation, and quality. Each of our teams has a strong history of operational execution, and together, we expect that we will enhance our financial profile through greater scale and profitability, paving the way for us to deliver strong shareholder value."

"We are excited for Zynga's next-generation mobile platform, free-to-play expertise, diverse offering of games and incredible team to join the Take-Two family," said Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, as part of the same announcement. "We are eager to continue building an unparalleled portfolio of games that will reach broader markets and lead to continued growth for this next chapter of Zynga's history."

With the deal having now gone through, Zynga's Gibeau and Bernard Kim will oversee the company's mobile efforts as well as the day-to-day operations of the combined Zynga and T2 Mobile Games business under the Zynga brand, per the initial announcement. What sort of projects might be developed from the newly combined company in the future is anybody's guess, but it seems fair to assume that there will be plenty of projects that attempt to leverage Take-Two intellectual property.

What do you think Zynga will do as part of Take-Two that it hadn't already been doing? Would you like to see mobile games based on Take-Two properties like Grand Theft Auto? Let us know in the comments, or feel free to reach out and hit me up directly over on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk about all things gaming!

[H/T GamesIndustry.biz]

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