December 20^th, 2004 (7:40pm) - Five days ago it was revealed that Electronic Arts’ scheduled takeover of developer Digital Illusions CE (DICE) had fallen through due to the fact that shareholders with 28 percent of Digital Illusions CE stock rejected a takeover bid from the industry’s largest third-party publisher. EA’s original offer to the company had been issued on November 15th, 2004 and had expired just a day after last week’s announcement, on December 16th, however, it seems that EA will not give up so easily.

Today EA Holding AB (EA) announced that it will acquire 25.6 percent of shares in DICE, in addition to the 18.9 percent already in the company’s possession, making EA one of the largest shareholders in the company with 44.5 percent of the outstanding capital and votes in DICE.

This 44.5 percent is shares, however, does mean that 90 percent of DICE shareholders have agreed to have an EA takeover commence, as the original agreement stated. Because of this fact, EA has altered the deal so that EA’s bid would become accepted if the publisher would become owner of 50 percent of capital and votes in DICE. The acceptance period has been extended to January 20th, 2005.