EA buys ‘Titanfall’ studio Respawn

Titanfall 2 didn’t do as well as expected when it came out, leaving the future for the game a bit uncertain. At least, the studio doesn’t seem to be suffering the same fate. EA just announced it acquired Respawn in a deal valued over US$400 million. EA has previously published two Titanfall games so the acquisition doesn’t come as a surprise.

The two are already working on a few projects. One is a third-person Star Wars game, which was announced back in May 2016. Another is a virtual reality experience. And last is another title for the Titanfall universe. What isn’t known is if it’ll be Titanfall 3 or a mobile version of the game.

Source: Engadget

21st Century Fox reportedly in talks with Disney to sell most of its company

If we were honest, this is what we thought of when we heard the news. (Image courtesy of: Marvel.com)

There are reports going around claiming Disney and 21^st Century Fox are currently in talks about the latter selling off most of its company to the multimedia production giant. According to CNBC, it has been happening in the past few weeks but there aren’t any guarantees that it’ll lead to a deal. They describe the talks as being “on again, off again.” If the deal pushes through, it’s said Fox will give up most of its properties except those that revolve around news and sports. It seems senior management at Fox see that they can’t compete in the changing media landscape and sees Disney and its big machine capable of competing against the big internet companies that are leading the charge now (e.g. Facebook, Netflix, Google, and Amazon, to name a few).

For Disney, this deal would be advantageous as it preps its own streaming service. They’d gain access to more movie and TV productions to add to their own streaming offering. And if you’re thinking what we’re thinking, we might finally get that X-Men, Avengers, and Fantastic Four crossover that we’ve been waiting for. (Even Ryan Reynolds is wondering what this deal could mean for his character Deadpool.) At the moment, nothing is for sure yet but we’re keeping our eyes out for this.

Google might be closing purchase of HTC assets to boost hardware efforts

Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Looks like Google might be thinking about getting back in the hardware business. This time, it’s being reported that Google is closing a deal with HTC to acquire the Taiwanese company’s hardware engineering assets, focusing on mobile. HTC is reportedly holding a town hall meeting on Thursday and if there’s truth to that, they might be discussing this deal. Not much is known at this point about which parts of HTC’s business Google plans to acquire. The Verge speculates they might leave the HTC brand for the company’s Vive and virtual reality business to use. As Evan Blass tweets, HTC is retaining its brand.

HTC has announced it was temporarily halting trading of its shares on the Taiwan stock exchange tomorrow because of the release of “material information,” which signals the announcement of something big.

Source: Bloomberg

Google reportedly wanted to buy Snap for US$30 billion

While it isn’t the first time it’s happened, it seems Facebook wasn’t the only one after Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc. Google reportedly wanted a piece of the incredibly popular pie and tried to buy the company for US$30 billion. According to Business Insider, Google verbally talked about the acquisition of Snapchat with the company’s CEO Evan Spiegel. Snap is denying that formal discussions happened. Google also won’t comment on the story. According to the report though, the offer was supposedly still on the table since the company’s IPO early on in March.

Whether or not there’s truth to this, Spiegel is known to like being in charge of his own company, especially with a product he started himself. It would’ve benefited Snapchat on the marketing side if they took the deal and Snapchat would’ve helped Google develop its AR technology. But in the meantime, Snap and Google do work close together. Google’s investment arm put money on Snapchat after it went public. While Snap is considered one of Google Cloud’s biggest customers and they promise to spend US$2 billion on Google’s cloud platform.

Source: GSMArena + 9to5Google