Microsoft Acquiring EA: 8 Major Things That Could Happen

6. EA's More "Questionable" Business Practices (Potentially) Go Away

Still reeling from the fallout of just how monumentally terrible their launch of Star Wars Battlefront II was (oh... and the closing of Visceral Games) EA are in one of the worst spots of their career when it comes to brand perception.

An acquisition by Microsoft doesn't magically make all of EA's higher-ups change their most money-hungry ideas, but it does mean that when a brand as otherwise positively revered as Microsoft/Xbox is in charge, there's no allowance for the shady likes of microtransactions, day one DLC and blind boxes.

At least - not on such an egregious a scale as EA's most recent dealings.

Regardless, post-Battlefront II, the industry has been in damage control mode. As a Kotaku article pointed out, the tensions inside EA's walls are at an all-time high, and it's directly because of how the wider populace has agreed their various practices are unacceptable.

Microsoft acquiring EA - and potentially being responsible for them as part of "the Xbox family" - means an entirely different set of investor totals has to be met, alongside the fact that the Xbox itself will be mentioned in tandem with EA for years to come. That means running a tighter ship, and as Disney had to step in and phone up EA to have them fix Battlefront, surely such a precedent would be addressed as part of the acquisition negotiations.