Electronic Arts to Buy Maxis for $125 million

Electronic Arts, a Palo Alto maker of video game software, agreed to buy rival Maxis Inc. of Walnut and its hot-selling line of SimCity products for about $125 million in stock. Electronic Arts would pay 0.3644 of its shares for each of Maxis’ 11.26 million shares outstanding. Based on Electronic Arts’ closing stock price of $30.375, Electronic Arts would pay about $11.07 for each Maxis share. Maxis’ SimCity products are some of the best-selling titles in the software industry, but the company has struggled in recent quarters. It has had to cut prices and has been elbowed aside by bigger video game companies such as Electronic Arts and Microsoft Corp. on retail shelves.