This week may have been the ultimate proof of just how hard it is for independent publishers -- meaning anyone who doesn't generate around $1 billion per year in revenue or more.

First Take-Two is targeted in an aggressive takeover bid by Electronic Arts, whose CEO justifies it by saying that in the current industry, "the need for scale is becoming more pronounced." Even Take-Two executive chairman Strauss Zelnick admitted that, as an industry trend, "we'll see continued consolidation."

In the wake of that, THQ, Midway, and Atari, all of which are struggling financially in large part because they're just too small, got big stock boosts on Monday following the Take-Two bid, indicating that Wall Street thinks they're going to be acquired.

(Outside the videogame industry, but within media, it's also worth noting the demise of New Line and its integration into Warner Bros. as evidence of this trend.)

Now we have Sci/Eidos engaging in a massive restructuring after it wasn't able to close a deal with any of its potential acquirers. "Our infrastructure is too big and expensive for the scale of the business," CEO Phil Rogers said in a statement. "The cost of delivering world-class games has increased significantly and we must provide appropriate levels of resource to maximize these opportunities."

Translation: The costs of making, marketing and distributing a diverse slate of games has become too big for a small publisher that really has just one hit franchise ("Tomb Raider"). So how is Sci/Eidos going to adapt?

-Changing to a studio structure focused on franchises like "Tomb Raider," "Hitman," and "Deux Ex."

-Create a casual and online gaming division called "Eidos Play."

-Cancel 14 unnamed projects in development. (These are presumably mostly new properties -- the kind that a small publisher can't afford to take a $20 million or $40 million risk on)

-Lay off 25% of its workforce, or about 250 people

Rogers was pretty blunt about Eidos' performance in the second half of last year, during which it lost  $162 million on $145 million of revenue (roughly translated). Losing more money than you take in revenue is, to put it bluntly, dismal.

Close watchers of the videogame industry will notice something about Eidos' plans -- it's remarkable similar to what Zelnick and CEO Ben Feder have been doing with Take-Two in the past year. Take-Two is organized around studios like Rockstar, its sports unit, and now 2K Boston, maker of "Bioshock." It laid people off. It even started a casual division last fall called "2K Play." Couldn't Eidos at least have come up with a more original name?

For more on the problems of independent publishers and the trend toward consolidation, I highly/humbly recommend a story I have on the topic in this week's weekly Variety, which just posted online. There's one quote that seems particularly apt given Sci/Eidos' news:

"The financial pressures of competing have gotten so acute that scale has become critical," says Arcadia Investment analyst John Taylor. "Most of the independents with sales below $1 billion per year are going to struggle."