There had been rumors circling around recently regarding Sony’s intentions to acquire Sony Ericsson. Today, those rumors have been made official. Sony has bought out Sony Ericsson’s shares and will soon integrate the mobile phone maker into the Sony empire as a whole. Sony will pay Ericsson €1.05 billion (approximately $1.47 billion) in a deal that’s expected to close in January 2012. It still has to be approved by executives in both companies, but that’s customary in transactions such as this.

‘Splosion Man and The Gunstringer, has been acquired by Microsoft. Any hopes of a multi-platform Twisted Pixel game have officially been squashed, but the studio has been creating Xbox 360-exclusive console games for a while now. Twisted Pixel will remained stationed in Austin, Texas and will be able to keep their unique identity as well.

Sony and Sucker Punch have finally stopped dating and made their partnership official. Sony has purchased Sucker Punch Productions which will now place the developer under the umbrellas of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios. Sucker Punch created a couple of Sony’s well known franchises such as inFamous and Sly Cooper.

This one of those stories that started as a rumor, got debunked and later turned out to be true. The mystery buyer of PopCap games has turned out to be Electronic Arts. Not all aspects of the original story were true. It was estimated that PopCap’s buyer was paying over $1 billion for the company. EA is only spending $750 million.

PopCap Games, the maker of some of the most time consuming games we’ve ever seen, may be up for sale. According to TechCrunch, multiple sources have reported PopCap’s asking price is over $1 billion. PopCap Games is responsible for hits such as Peggle, Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled and plenty more. It recently created a 4th & Battery, a studio dedicated to developing free games just for fun.

What would you do if you were the head of a multi-billion dollar company that most gamers seem to love? You’d probably want to continue to make those gamers happy. After all, a happy customer is much more likely to open their wallets. Apple is in this position right now. It created highly sought after mobile devices and a distribution platform that completely disrupted the chain of command in the videogame industry. Through the App Store, Apple has sold an untold number of games and has taken 30% in royalties from every single one. One would think Apple would take that influence and form a videogame empire. Unfortunately, that’s not happening.

In a move that further exemplifies THQ’s new direction, the company has sold its wireless division to a company called 24MAS. THQ mentioned in its last financial report that it is going to concentrate more on core titles, while backing away from smaller aspects of the business. In this case, THQ Wireless dealt with games that could not take advantage of the current boom in smartphone gaming.

ZeniMax has been on an acquisition roll lately. Zenimax recently bought Tango Gameworks, which is the studio headed by the creator of Resident Evil. Prior to that, ZeniMax welcomed Arkane Studios and id Software into its growing company. MachineGames is currently working on a AAA game using the id Tech 5 engine, that MachineGames’ CEO says will, “push the game development envelope.” id Software’s upcoming game RAGE uses this same engine.

Today’s early afternoon rumor regarding a possible acquisition of Chillingo at the hands of Electronic Arts has proven to be mostly true. EA has officially purchased the Angry Birds and Cut the Rope publisher for much less than originally estimated.

Chillingo, the publisher of the mega-hit Angry Birds, has reportedly attracted the attention of Electronic Arts and a number of other companies.