Merger mania (or should we say purger mania) made headlines this week.. It seems like companies are being gobbled up with no end in site. The biggest news items of the week have all had to do with mergers - companies becoming parts of bigger companies, games getting dropped, and people being fired.

　　The buzz in our newsroom concerns the now-confirmed rumor that Electronic Arts and Radical Entertainment may be tying the knot. While company people for Radical have said that there has been some dialogue about a possible deal, we've been wondering why EA would even consider buying Radical. Radical makes some great sports games, but many gamers still see EA as the sporting powerhouse - just the way they are. But Radical has something more than just good games (like NHLPowerplay); it has one item that may be attracting EA - the ESPN Digital Games license. While EA Sports is a well-known brand among gamers, the ESPN brand is even bigger in the sporting universe, and ownership of that license could help EA considerably as it could land new buyers from outside the current games market.

　　One other card that Radical holds is a snowboarding game. Since EA doesn't have a snowboarding title, buying Radical would be great for EA. On the other hand, however, any sort of buyout could be bad for Radical. Since both companies make similar titles, Radical employees could conceivably see pink slips in their future. Radical has also been going though some financial woes since the future of Virgin (the publisher for its last two games) is somewhat uncertain.

　　We've heard about some other developments at Radical as well, but until we get some sort of confirmation, all we'll say is "no comment." As the deal pans out, we'll keep you up to date.

　　Broderbund and the Learning Company have merged, and gamers took some losses - Extreme Warfare and BAJA Racing were both scratched from Red Orb's lineup; Prince of Persia 3D and Warlords III are still on track, but the Journeyman Project 4 title was let go. Luckily, Presto Studios (the developer of the Journeyman Project series) took back ownership of the Journeyman brand. Presto is currently in search of a new publisher for the next Journeyman title, and with Presto's close ties to Activision (the publisher for Presto's upcoming title Beneath), Journeyman 4 would seem like an easy deal to make for the two companies.

　　On the tech front, GameSpot hardware guru Loyd Case took a look at Intel's Katmai New Instructions, which could speed up games quite a bit. Katmai processors will hopefully be more used than Intel's current MMX extensions (when was the last time you looked for a game with an MMX sticker? Unreal seems to be the only one that even talks about MMX). It seems that Intel has been keeping its ear to the ground since AMD has gained solid support for its 3DNow! extensions. Intel says that the Katmai could speed up games from 30-70 percent.

　　On Monday, Diamond officially announced that it would be launching an MP3 player called the Rio. We know that it has nothing to do with games, but we do know that gamers are the largest group of MP3 users. Diamond dropped by last week to show off a hand-built version of the audio player, and it sounded great (and editors here at GameSpot want one now!).

　　Those were the big headlines for the past week. Stay tuned.