Take-Two Interactive is eyeing further acquisitions after £9.3billion Zynga deal

After buying mobile gaming giant Zynga for £9.3billion ($12.7billion), Take-Two Interactive is looking to snap up even more studios.

News of the Zynga acquisition broke today, with subsequent news that Take-Two plans to leverage its new subsidiary’s strengths to bring some of its most significant properties – an IP portfolio that includes Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto, and Borderlands – to mobile platforms.

However, the holding company that owns Rockstar Games and 2K is still looking for further acquisitions (thanks, VGC).

“In terms of your question regarding ongoing acquisitions, that’s still something that will be of interest to us,” Take-Two CEO Strauss Zelnick said in an investor call, following the Zynga deal.

Whether those unspecified targets would be other developers or companies that would expand Take-Two’s reach into different sectors remains a mystery. Still, the company is sounding particularly confident in the wake of the Zynga purchase.

“We will close this transaction with a fortress-like balance sheet, with very little net debt,” Zelnick said, adding that he expects Take-Two to “be in a net cash position” by the business year ending March 2024.

Zelnick added that Take-Two expects “to generate positive cash flow on an ongoing basis as soon as the [Zynga] transaction closes”, which would leave the company “in a powerful position to continue to acquire”.

Looking forward, the CEO added that “our approach to acquisition remains the same, which is we’re looking for great teams, great intellectual property, and accretive transactions.”

In addition to Take-Two’s existing IP and the properties it will soon acquire, such as casual gaming behemoths Words With Friends and Farmville, Zynga’s upcoming titles such as Star Wars: Hunters – a Nintendo Switch game, expected to launch in 2022 – will further bolster the company’s books, potentially giving it even more leverage for future acquisitions.

In other news, Detroit: Become Human developer Quantic Dream may be working on a secret “comedy” game alongside its recently announced Star Wars: Eclipse title. The unannounced project is rumoured to be based on its 2013 cinematic tech demo, The Dark Sorcerer.