Apparently US games mag GamePro has been speculating that Microsoft are wishing to aquire Unreal developers Epic Games for a tidy US Billion.

This had been somewhat shrugged off as rumour, but a recent message to Developmag by the Epic Vice President has caused some interesting discussion. Rein claims that $1billion would not be enough to allow the company to be bought, and they should be looking at around double that figure.

Of course, he could be pulling a wind up on it all, and it could just be a massive rumour.... It'd be interesting to see whether the aqquisition would lock the Unreal engine to the PC and xBox, as it would have a rather large knockon effect on future game development.

Interesting indeed.