Adobe's Macromedia Acquisition Touches Game World

Adobe has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. Although this major acquisition by the Photoshop creator has relatively little impact on that product, Macromedia is the creator of the Flash standard, used in a plethora of web-based casual games, and is also making in-roads into mobile gaming with the Flash Lite standard, as well as the Macromedia Director platform, still in use for more modest game-related products. It's expected that these game-related products will continue developing as normal, despite the acquisition. Bruce Chizen, chief executive officer of Adobe, commented: "Customers are calling for integrated software solutions that enable them to create, manage and deliver a wide range of compelling content and applications -- from documents and images to audio and video." He continued: "By combining our powerful development, authoring and collaboration software -- along with the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash -- Adobe has the opportunity to bring this vision to life with an industry-defining technology platform." Adobe's acquisition of Macromedia is expected to close in Fall 2005, and the companies are also indicating that consolidation is not the main reason for the acquisition, stating: "While we anticipate the integration team will identify opportunities for cost savings by the time the acquisition closes, the primary motivation for the two companies' joining is to continue to expand and grow our business into new markets."