EA has recently stated that it wanted to wait until the core development of GTA IV was complete before making an offer to publisher, Take-Two, in a bid to acquire the company. Recently, EA has bought Pandemic and BioWare and by all accounts, everything is running smoothly with no hitches. The EA/Take-Two discussions had been running for about 1 year prior to EA formally making the publisher an offer. Take-Two recently rejected an offer of USD2 billion from EA preferring to take the stock options route. The deal should be finalised in the near future.