Over the last few days, Electronic Arts has made multiple offers to acquire Take-Two Interactive. The first offer was to acquire Take-Two for $25 per share in cash. When that offer was rejected by Take-Two, Electronic Arts raised its offer to purchase the company to $26 per share. Because of Take-Two’s reluctance to accept its offer, Electronic Arts made its offer public, and Take-Two made its rejection equally public.

EA’s offer of $26 per share is a 64% premium over Take-Two Interactive’s closing stock price on February 15, and a 63% premium over Take-Two’s average stock price over the previous 30 days. EA is eager to complete the transaction rapidly, and has clearly begun to publicize its efforts to bring additional pressure to bear on Take-Two’s executives and board of directors.

Take-Two has repeatedly rejected EA’s bids, and (this afternoon) also decided to publicize its rejection of EA’s offer. Take-Two’s position boils down to arguing that the time is not ripe to discus a merger or acquisition due to the imminent release of Grand Theft Auto IV on April 29. Take-Two also argued that EA’s offer was not nearly high enough and that it would be happy to begin discussing a more substantial offer on April 30 (after GTA IV reaches stores).

EA believes that to the extent the release of GTA IV will benefit Take-Two’s stock, that benefit is already built in, and therefore Take-Two should accept EA’s premium, all-cash offer. Take-Two clearly disagrees. EA has expressed that it is not interested in continuing these discussions at a later date.

EA clearly hopes that its offer is high enough that by making the offer public, Take-Two’s shareholders will demand that Take-Two accept the offer, given that Take-Two is plagued by a variety of corporate problems. Take-Two is hoping that if it can continue to operate through the release of Grand Theft Auto IV, it will be in a strong position, and will either be a stronger company or positioned to receive a lot more money as part of a buyout.