The title of this article might not be as far-fetched as you think, as Reuters reports Electronic Arts is currently trying to take over Take-Two Interactive. Firaxis, the company founded by Sid Meier, is a subsidiary of Take-Two. For now Take-Two has rejected EA’s offer, as they expect their stocks to rise dramatically after releasing ”Grand Theft Auto IV” on April 29. Take-Two Chairman Strauss Zelnick says:

We didn’t slam the door, we just said look, the price is not right and the time is wrong

If EA were to acquire Take-Two it would become the biggest game producer by far, in the process scooping up the producer of some of the most popular games around. In a Q&A with GameSpot EA CEO John Riccitiello says:

we love their studios and we like their intellectual properties

For now the deal is on hold, but EA states they keep “all options open” alluding to a possible hostile take-over. For now it’s impossible to say what this take-over will mean in terms of future production of games. If you have any ideas on this, the forums are open for discussion!

As was mentioned in the news here before, Will Wright received a Vanguard Award for creative excellence in the entertainment industry. Well, Newsweek has published a video paying tribute to Will’s works that features some never before seen footage of Spore. It also shows some shots of the SimCities, and the Sims as well. It’s definitely worth a look, so watch it here! One striking thing about the footage is how amazing the planets actually look, it really is stunning, even for the limited amount of footage.

The newest version of Windows arrived early for Jirnsum, one of our members, yesterday. The much awaited and highly promoted Windows Vista is set to be released on January 30th, but he managed to get a hold of it a week earlier! There’s quite a few new features in Vista, including a very polished Graphical User Interface named Aero, and many new security features.

At first look, Jirnsum’s reviews are quite good:

Eyecandy is ofcourse the most obvious, but one can also see MS did some serious work in the safety department. Even an administrator cannot “just change” system settings, which also means a virus infecting an administrator account can’t do that.

He didn’t notice any significant slowdowns or lag, compared to Windows XP, either.

So the initial reviews are good, but we are still all wondering if the newest Windows will live up to all the hype that Microsoft has placed on it, and most people here at Simphoni are not planning on upgrading right away. In any case, Jirnsum has posted some screenshots and a lot of interesting info for us, so check it out!

Discuss Windows Vista on the forums

The Simphoni staff wishes the community a Happy New Year! We are planning to make 2007 an exciting year. We are eagerly awaiting the release of Spore, which promises be as exciting, as well as the next SimCity and The Sims, which were recently announced. The news team is looking for all the advance information on Spore that we can find (if you have news, PM the Monkeys Uncle or post it in the forums). Also during 2007, we will continue to expand our coverage of all things SimCity. As always, the most valuable content we have comes from the members. We are looking for members who are interested in contributing articles, lots, mods, and city journals, and other items. If you would like to contribute such items, please message a staff member.

Have a great 2007!