It's official: Take-Two Interactive has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire ownership of the British firm Codemasters, for a figure of just under one billion dollars, partly liquidated in the form of shares in Take-Two itself.

In formalising the indiscretion that has already circulated in recent days, the US publisher has stressed that the intellectual property of the two companies is perfectly integrated.

It is clear that Take-Two intends to expand its line of sports simulations, collected under the 2K Sports brand,with the precious motor licenses long in the hands of Codemasters, first of all that relating to the F1 World Championship,guaranteed until 2025.

So let's expect a hypothetical "F1 2K21" to arrive in the future, hoping not to find it burdened by the excessive microtransactions that have brought a lot of criticism to Take-Two, particularly in relation to its most successful title, the NBA 2K basketball simulation.

But of course Codemasters doesn't just mean F1. Another very important IP that with this operation ends up in the Take-Two house is that ofDIRT, which right in this period is on the market with DIRT 5, the first arcade racer designed for next-gen consoles.

It should also be remembered that Codemasters in turn was conducting an interesting acquisition policy, bringing within it some reference studies in the field of motor simulations: it is only a year ago the acquisition of the famous Slighty Mad Studios, ultimate authors of the successful Project CARS series.
It will be interesting to see how Take-Two will want to manage a potentially very rich catalog.

The acquisition, so far only agreed, will be completed in early 2021, after which it will become operational.