The big news in the strategy world is Take 2 Games’s announcement of its purchase of the rights to the Civilization franchise and the consequent committment to publish the upcoming sequel to the storied franchise. Civ IV will be pubished by Take 2’s 2KGames division.

Take 2 has a fair record of strategy games under its belt. The Age of Wonders series and the Stronghold games are their doing, with a new Stronghold game coming later this year, also under the 2KGames label. Take 2 has also published Railroad Tycoon II, the Tropico games and Kohan 2.

So I’m all for this. Take 2 has lost its rights to publish NFL games, so it needs to shore up its bottom line (as if Grand Theft Auto isn’t making tons of money for them already…) and Civ is an established PC franchise. The 22.3 million dollar price for the Civilization name sounds like a deal to me.