Actually this scares me, since this means their eyes are fully on EU, the last bastion of creative game development. Please, please tell me your governments subsidize you game companies or the EU commission prevents hostile takeovers?
Clearly they have bought up most of the US, Bioware and Crytek, why would they stop there? It's not if they need to buy more out of need of diversity, they clearly want to own IPs. IPs allow them to either sit on properties, so no one can use/compete with their crappy development models or to push unfinished shovelware out, then abandon support.
:damn no crying in your beer icon:
As far as the EU-commission goes, it keeps a very strict and stern eye out for takeovers, monopolies and corporations like Microsoft et al. who are using their
monopoly-like status to grow stronger and bully other companies around. The thing is this, though. In Europe, the member states of the EU still have some say over what happens in their countries regarding market laws and such things. And we don't really have anything as big as the steaming dragon, EA, over here -across the pond (from the US). We have, of course, Atari (or Infogrames), and also Ubisoft which is French, and then we have Eidos from Britain and maybe Activision, too? But a dominant player like EA we don't really have.
I do think that many of the goverments here in Europe subsidize gaming development since they tend to view the development of games more of an artform than anything to market, package and (re)sell like the US tend to do.
It really is the same way with movies. The movies from the US are fun, and meant to entertain and then be forgotten. European movies tend to be more artistic in their design as well as take more chances than the average US game or movie do.
Even Bioware seems to have been infested with this 'hey, we're a business corporation. Our first aim is to make money, e.g. our reason for being is to make money. If we then make enough money, we can maybe go design some great games'. At least that's what I have gotten from DA's Lead Writer, David Gaider's, statements at the Bioware forums. I wonder where 'the best story-driven games in the world' went??
The thing is this: If you build it, they will come - they will flock to the malls just in order to get your latest great designed game, not because of the hype, but because the game is just that good.