Koei’s merger with Tecmo is now official and will begin taking place next April, according to a report on Reuters. The merger will be a stock deal that is said to be worth 20 billion yen ($207 million).
Each Tecmo share will be exchanged for 0.9 shares in the holding company, while one share in the [...]

Square-Enix recently revealed that it has signed its first western game development deal with Gas Powered Games. This is somewhat of a big deal considering the company hasn’t really expanded outside of Japan or the RPG genre, but it seems like they’re ready for challege according to a new interview with Gamesindustry.biz:
“The strategic partnership with [...]

Sweden-based Massive Entertainment has been acquired by Ubisoft, according to a statement released by the company. Acquired from Activision Blizzard, Massive is the developer of the critically-acclaimed World in Conflict RTS series.
“Massive’s development team places great importance on its freedom to innovate and create games of the highest quality,” stated Martin Walfisz, president and founder [...]

Electronic Arts is closing their EA Casual label and merging it with its label dedicated to the sims, according to a report yesterday on Kotaku. In addition, EA Casual President Kathy Vrabeck will be resigning from the company as well.
We’ve learned a lot about casual entertainment in the past two years, and found that casual [...]

GameStop announced this morning that they have reached an agreement to acquire Micromania, France’s leading video game retailer. In the deal, GameStop will acquire the chain’s 332 stores in the country, giving the company a presence in France they didn’t have before.
“As we have accelerated our growth in Europe over the years, we have kept [...]

Turner’s GameTap service has been sold to Eurpean digital distribution company Metaboli, as was announced by both companies jointly this afternoon. Under the arrangement, the GameTap service will continue in the U.S. as-is, but behind the scenes Turner will stay on in a “partnership” to assist in the technical and migration support for the service [...]

After months of courting Take-Two, Electronic Arts tonight confirmed tonight via investor press release that they won’t create another proposal for the company and have terminated discussions as well.
“EA is tracking toward a record breaking year,” said CEO John Riccitiello. “We’re launching 15 new games including award-winners like SPORE, Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge, great [...]

NCsoft today confirmed reports of consolidation within the company with the announcement of their new NC West subsidary. The new juncture will combine the company’s United States and European groups, as well pave the way for the release of some of the latter’s staff.
The company will be led by CEO Chris Chung, President of Product [...]

Have you ever been in a GameStop and wondered exactly how they’re making such a cleaning in the gaming retail sector? Why their employees push you so hard to buy that used game? Why that game you thought you bought was new, but instead a refurbished one?
A former employee (and a very disgruntled one at [...]

Take-Two announced tonight their financial results for the third fiscal quarter of 2008. Net revenue for the quarter was $433.8 million, up from $206.4 million from the same period last year. As most expected, the dramatic hike is thanks in large part to the release of Grand Theft Auto IV.
“Take-Two’s exceptionally robust third quarter results [...]