[quote name='nneace']Yeah, I think this hostile take over steams from Blockbuster and the shady "No Late Fees Policy." With the lawsuit in the Garden State, I think this may be a two-fold corporate purpose. First to divert attention from their legal battles, and take out a corporate competitor in the process. What is unfortunate, is that it is all based on shares, and some billionaire (can't remember his name), owns half the shares of both Hollywood Video and Blockbuster. He suggested that Hollywood Video sell to Blockbuster. I will try to keep updated on the happenings.[/quote]
No, this began long, long before the 'No Late Fees' campaign. BB first made an offer to HV over a year ago.
EA is not the model to consider here. Think instead of the awful HP buyout of Compaq. Disastrous and ill-conceived as that procedure was, it had some real concerns about the future of the two companies' core businesses. Unlike almost any other comparable product the PC business has to compete with guys working out of their garages, assembling machines to order. A lot of cost goes into having a big brand name and all the infrastructure that goes with it. Yet I know of several small city governments here in SoCal whose only brand name computers are servers.
The HP and Compaq leadership thought they had a better chance of surviving as one entity against everybody else than as separate companies. It might have worked if they weren't in direct competition on so many fronts.
The video store business is in a similar state. Conditions are changing from when the affordable VCR brought their business into existence. It has become increasingly hard in the era of DVD and growing video-on-demand options to justify renting instead of buying discounted DVDs or ordering the movie from your cable/satellite provider and storing it on a DVR to be watched at the consumer's convenience. At the same time the structure of their outlets isn't well suited to competing with the likes of Best Buy. They lose more business to outright purchases at the other BB than they do to HV.
Blockbuster isn't entirely sure what they'll be five years from now but if it involved B&M locations then consolidating the field under their brand is an important step. At the least, it will hold off the final collapse a bit longer.