We here at TheGameReviews.com reported earlier this week on how EA has been making overtures to Take-Two Interactive to convince it to come join the EA family for quite a lot of money. However, Take-Two, believing that it wasn’t just about the money and more about respect, turned EA’s offer down flat and tossed the ball back into EA’s court.

Well, EA isn’t backing down in its attempts to take over Take-Two, quite the contrary, as the word is that EA is planning on executing a hostile takeover of the company. According to EA, however, this is but one of the plans to settle the issue, as EA is in the words of EA CFO Warren Jenson to the New York Post, "we’re keeping all options open."

The deadline for Take-Two to change its mind regarding the buyout deal, which was on given on Monday, has now come and gone, and EA has now turned to other possibilities to achieve the same ends instead of leaping automatically into a proxy battle with Take-Two. One of these is appealing directly to the interests of Take-Two’s shareholders, which EA has already begun when EA CEO John Riccitiello, released his letter of February 15th online in order that the shareholders of Take-Two could see exactly what deal he was offering.

In what has to be a prime example of turnabout being fair play, there is also the possibility of EA taking control in the same way that the Chairman of the Board at Take-Two, Strauss Zelnick, took over the company back in March of last year: by successfully turning the investors of the company over to EA’s point of view. Zelnick accomplished this by convincing the biggest of Take-Two Interactive, which included firms such as Oppenheimer Funds, D.E. Shaw, SAC Capital, and Tudor Investment, to support a changing of the guard at Take-Two. Now he may have the same tactic used against him by EA.

Another possible complication for EA is that Take-Two’s market price has now risen above EA’s second tendered buyout price of $26 dollars per share of stock to now rest at $26.85. Investment firms, such as Stern Agee, are issuing statements to investors that the EA/Take-Two situation may develop into a hostile takeover by the medium of a tendered offer to Take-Two. It is the opinion of one of Stern Agee’s analysts, Arvind Bhatia, that the shareholders of Take-Two will approve of EA’s deal but only if they offer a price 50% higher then it’s previous offer of $17.36

EA’s CFO also offered the statement that “We need to be at a place [by the Christmas shopping season] where we can take advantage of the synergies and strengthen the sales by using our publishing organization.” This, according to Jensen, requires that EA “go through an integration,” which “doesn’t happen overnight.” Bhatia of Stern Agee said that the stockholders of Take-Two will rebuff Zelnick management group’s revised compensation plan, drafted Feb.14, that would give access to new restricted stock that would be coupled with accelerating vesting in case of a change in ownership.

TheGameReviews.com will continue to monitor the situation as it develops so stay tuned.