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How Microsoft Tried To Buy Nintendo
An anonymous reader submits: "A new book, Opening the Xbox: Inside Microsoft's Plan to Unleash an Entertainment Revolution discusses Microsoft's plans to buy Nintendo for $25 billion in late 1999. By January 2000 however, talks dissolved and each company went their seperate way. Makes you wonder how the home entertainment industry would be different if they had gone through with it. Stories are at Gamers and Cube Europe."
If Microsoft really wanted to be immediately successful in the console market, they should've bought Sega late last year. The Dreamcast was a great system, and with the Microsoft marketing machine behind it and a potential sequel, there would be almost guaranteed success. Plus, Sega could be bought for a whole lot less money (especially now).
because, although MS would have eliminated/assimilated a competitor with the deal, with MS's name on the console the public reactions would have been the same.
On the plus side, Im just glad we dont have to use X-Cubes. On the negative, it would have been an uncommon sight of an American company taking over a Japanese one.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
Now when your gamecube crashes, there is no blue screen of death, just Maro popping up saying "Mama-mea, iv'e crashed AGAIN"
MSNES
The way I see the situation, Nintendo probably tried to pull something similar to what MS did back when they entered the mouse market. (MS got into negotiations with Logitech, learned all about their manufacturing process, then broke off talks) Nintendo probably just saw the opportunity to learn a lot about their competition, and entertained MS just enough to get all the info they could from them. Once they did they, they broke off talks. Nintendo is so set on their business model that they won't try anything new. Nintendo of America would love to be more aggressive against Sony, but they have to answer to the Japan branch, who is quite content where they are because they make a hell of a lot more money than the games branch of Sony does. If it's not broken, don't fix it is pretty much their motto, so why would they ever even considering selling out to MS ?
Super Mario Bros: "Hey, kids, itsa Mario! I wanna taka some time from da game, to tell you about the dangers of competition in da OS market. If da 9 US states of Bowser have their way, competition will enter da OS market and Yoshi willa die! Mama Mia!"
Pokemon: "Picachoo just evolved into the most stable, user friendly, Pokemon ever: XPachoo!"
Legend of Zelda: "Link, Hyrule can only be saved from the evil free office suite spread by Ganon by gathering the three pieces of Mircosoft Office to form the triad!"
Is there serious sentiment in Germany to ban all violent video games due to the recent tragedy? I know Slashdot readers will not support such a measure, but I am wondering if anyone has insight into the opinions of the general populace.
(Of course this is offtopic, but unless JonKatz posts a story about this I have no where else to ask.)
... and I forgot to add that the last point there only serves to exemplify the issue that nearly all of Win2k's and WinXP's "innovations" have actually been done before, either in *NIX-land or other software. (And usually better.)
..this would only have helped put MS ahead in the game. Outside of North America, XBox sales are weak (to say the least). It goes to reason, however, that with the Nintendo name behind the console (including the good hardware/game engineering that goes into Nintendo products) that the Japanese and European markets would have taken MS' offering a little more seriously.
The fact that the initial code name was Project Midway -- they don't want the Japanese people to know that because it will hurt their feelings."
Well, it could have been worse. Project Hiroshima anyone? It will obliterate the competition!
Without going into a huge rant here, I'll express my thankfulness that this did not happen.
THERE IS A GOD.
I got into computers with the hope of one day becomming a programmer for a game company, hopefully Nintendo. If MS had bought them out I'd have found an alternative employer. The Bungie buyout was disapointing enough...
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Why didn't they just offer a tenth of that 25 billion to Miyamoto? He's the Steven Spielberg of video games, and he'd be the primary boon for buying Nintendo (aside from the Pokemon liscense).
.. and you forget to put your foot in your mouth when you wrote this. Come on, of course Microsoft has copied Unix. How could they not!!! Do you accuse Saturn to rip off Ford because they're making cars. Ford has been there for a hundred years! You're right, Saturn are dirty bastards for trying to make a clone or a different version of car.
Linux and UNIX groupies like you give the community a bad name.
And what was wrong with trying to buy Nintedo? It's not only a question on buying to beat everyone. This is a pretty normal move in the industry. If you have some ideas, but don't have all the expertise to go forward with them, why don't you make a alliance with another company, or buy the other company and integrate it with yours, so the product will be even better?
www.cube-europe.com/news/10198973416591.html
This sound bite is the best:
When interviewing Nintendo's U.S president Minoru Arakawa, he let slip that Nintendo 'weren't sure what to think when Microsoft made the offer.'' He continued with the commments "I was surprised, we didn't need the money. I thought it was a joke."
sums it up nicely for me
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
the existence of the X-Box weakening sales for Nintendo making it more susceptible if Microsoft should want to buy them later?
Enix.
You've heard of them, right? They put out that little Dragon Quest/Warrior series, the seventh of which is the all-time best selling game in Japan. Heck, there's even a Japanese law saying that Enix can only release a new DQ game on a weekend, because otherwise millions of kids/adults will skip school/work just to get their hands on it ASAP and play it all day.
Even the mere announcement that the next Dragon Quest game will be an Xbox exclusive would guarantee the console's success in Japan. It's like Japanese gamers wouldn't have a choice in the matter. They'd need Dragon Quest 8, and thus they would need an Xbox, no matter what.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
I suppose that the "X-Cube" was never meant to be.
methinks this article should be under the 'Microsoft' topic. ..hmmmmm
Just think if this buyout had gone through...
gamecube?
anway.. this reminds me of a good ol' borg joke
Q: How many Borg does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A: All of them.
I thought the Pacman franchise was owned by Namco, not Pacman.
:)
And it was called Puckman before it hit the States. I wonder what made them wanna change it...
If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.
Reminds me of the Simpson's episode where Homer offers Internet access.
If MS had bought Nintendo then Pikachu could be an MS Office Assistent.
THAT would be cool.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
According to the artivle, the Xbox project was originally called project Midway????
They have got to be kidding, naming a project after the naval battle in WWII that turned the tide in the Pacific. Thus, in MS' mind, they are "at war" with the Japanese over the game console industry and hope to "turn the tide" with the Xbox.
How utterly distatsteful to people who gave their lives in such battles, and how *especially* disgusting and disrespectful that must be to the Japanese.
I am dumbfounded. How about Toyota calling the next Camry project Pearl Harbor.
Microsoft continually amazes and disgusts me beyond belief.
Microsoft of Borg. Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated into our "XBox" plans
if you think about it, linux is more like the borg than microsoft is (they are more like the klingons).
the borg: they all work together as one, to create a super-force.
Thank God this deal didn't go through. The combined evil of Microsoft and Nintendo would have reached critical mass, collapsed inward on itself and formed a black hole that would surely have destroyed us all.
Years ago, after reading about all the shifty crap that Nintendo pulled in this book, I started thinking of them as the Microsoft of Japan. Price fixing, exclusivity deals with retailers to lock out competitors, the lockout chip feature in their carts, lots of different stuff. Nintendo and Microsoft already have a lot of similar pages in their respective playbooks.
Microsoft was probably salivating at the thought of having a viselike grip on people's lives from the time they fire up their first video game as a kid, until the final time they turn off their PC before going on to die in their sleep later that night. Luckily for us, the X-Box is proving to be an also-ran, so we won't have to worry about it.
~Philly
Can you see it now?
.NET empire, while the courts are paid off with funding from Yoshi's magic mushroom factory.
First, Mario kills Luigi, who is unnecessary competition. Of course, he has nothing to fear from Bowser: his employer has proprietary rights to hellfire. Soon the Kuppas will be building Mario's
Pioneered my ass. It plainly said in the Netscape executable that the report-bugs-back-to-netscape technology was licensed from some other company. (This is to say nothing of the shitload of licensed technology in Netscape)
Welcome to the real world, where software engineering decisions involve deciding whether buying technology is a more soft effective idea than producing technology.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
If I could buy Nintendo I would, but I can't afford it, so instead I'll sell myself to MS for $25 billion. Unless someone else have an interesting offer?
If my memory serves me correctly, when MS decided that they wanted to get into the online-service market, they tried to by AOL. Is there anything new under the sun?
If this had gone through, would M$ now own the Seattle Mariners? It's difficult to imagine Bill Gates being a sports guy .. but I guess Mark Cuban was able to make the transition pretty well.
He, of course, said it was a *tactic* to gain control of the industry, with Nintendo out of the way MS would only have Sony to deal with, which wouldn't be *too* difficult if they had the backing of Nintendo's numerous popular franchises plus their own franchises...They'd have the children's market cornered already, the adult industry is not too hard to crack into.
I believe we all know the story about how kids would go to local arcades and scratch part of the marquee off so that the P in puck would become the F in, well you know the word..;)
When entering a new market it is always easier to buy another company (if you can afford it) rather than try to force your way in there. When you buy another company you get consumer base, brandnames expertise etc.
rights to Pac-Man from Namco (a Japanese company)? I always thought their name was based
on the notion of a carnival Midway; I suspect that Namco's executives, if they even thought about
it, either shared that idea, or didn't care so long as they got paid.
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Ninetendo wanted to learn from Microsoft about making console games and systems. Because Ninetendo lacks experience in that field you know.
Unless Ninetendo needed urgent information on how to make a bussiness plane or a golf simulator, i would suggest you have it backwards.
I get it. I laughed. *high-five*.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
Yeah, but we don't beat people up to make them assimilated. Microsoft is like the blob, eating and consuming and sucking up everything. haha. sucking. some reason, i'm not laughing too much.
we're like the People's Coalition of Peaceful Forces. We will protect you, provided you help protect us. GPL baby, yeah. We aren't that big but we are growing. Microsoft is the current, abusive monstrosity, that is consuming and crushing and harming the people, but for now it may be easier to stay in the Kingdom of Microsoft than running away. But we're still getting refugees.
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
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If Microsoft bought Nintendo and Nintendo's influence spread through the rest of MS, the releases of upcoming versions of Windows would be delayed repeatedly, so people wouldn't have to upgrade so often.
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I think Microsoft will never be a big player in the videogame industry, regardless of how much money they pour into it.
They need to dominate both the American and Japanese markets to stand a chance.
Here are some of the things that will stop them:
- Most important video game developers are Japanese. Those companies have strong relationships with Sony and/or Nintendo. You simply can't buy your way into a closed industry in Japan. I know, I work there.
- Culture clash. Japanese gamers don't like the Xbox. It's big, ugly and all the exclusive games are very American.
- Microsoft has absolutely no way to force anyone to buy an Xbox. Their Windows/Office tactics don't apply here.
- MS actually looses money on each Xbox they sell. If they don't have a big market share a couple years from now (and they wont), they will NOT keep trying. Not even M$ can afford to do this.
If I was Microsoft, I would make Xbox2 run PC games directly. No porting needed whatsoever.
Cheers.
http://download.theforce.net/theater/shortfilms/co nsolewars/cwpart1.swf
Of course I'm kidding. I know that Mark Cuban has always been a Mavericks fan and he's done an awesome job with that team. Unlike most stingy owners, he is willing to spend the money to get his team a championship. ++Cuban for that.
Intresting note, the woman who lead BOB's development whent on to marry bill gates. Now she's in charge of billions of dolars to help starving africans and stuff.
I don't know something about that just seems wrong some how...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
You know, I'm Jewish and I keep hearing about this whole worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Apparently I'm not entered in their records correctly - could someone tell me who I need to write to so I can get my monthly check and my "How to manipulate the media" packet?
A lock out feature, sounds a lot like copy protection, ever tried to run a homebrewed game on a PSX, or XBOX. Why don't you call Sony evil, cause they do the same thing, but worse, cause you could use a converter for here to play Japanese games, you do that on a Sony and you are sued to death, aka mod-chip companies. Nothing Nintendo did was wrong, just not common place back then. No people who do not do that are blamed for not protecting there stuff when it gets copied.
What do you expect when you release a 3 year old game. I remeber, when Microsoft bought bungee, a game show had a clip of the Bungee people playing Halo on thier PCs, its funny that you still can't play it now, and it will never be on a Mac.
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Believe it or not, Nintendo is that big. They make more than twice as much in revenues in the game industry as anyone else and they have a lot of valuable intellectual properties.
Um, has there ever been a riot in japan?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Microsoft was probably salivating at the thought of having a viselike grip on people's lives from the time they fire up their first video game as a kid, until the final time they turn off their PC before going on to die in their sleep later that night.
:P (just look at their reaction to the emulation scene)
hahah, that's some desturbing images there... the final time they turn off their PC and go to bed at night to die...
Anyway, I don't think David Sheff painted Nintendo as totaly evil, although they kind of are
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Isn't the Microsoft campus next to Nintendo's?
Is the MS campus nearly full?
Aren't real estate prices high in Redmond?
Wouldn't it be worth buying a company and closing them down just to fill out the last quadrant of your block?
Since we like netscape, mere technical details such as the one you mention are selectively forgotten.
Please don't move our cheese!
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Yes, well these "x actually did y before z even thought of it" wars are quite common here, unfortunately, and I won't be dragged into one now.
Get over. Innovation is the art of bringing advancements to the populace. Unix has its fair share, and so has Microsoft.
I wouldn't be so perturbed if MS would at least acknowledge that many the features at hand existed before MS was even a company. (Let alone actually give credit.) They spin them off as being Yet Another Pioneering Microsoft Innovation.
Come on, of course Microsoft has copied Unix. How could they not!!!
My problem with MS is not so much that they borrow many of their ideas (and even code) from other operating systems, rather that they do so and then proceed to spin it off as Yet Another Microsoft Innovation.
Considering their (now) very public anti-Unix stance, you'd think they wouldn't have anything to do with Unix. At all. But to this day, we keep seeing MS announcing New and Incredible Features and ideas that were either pioneered or made mainstream by Unix and other operating systems that have been around for decades. They even go so far as to "borrow" code (I think the Win2k/XP TCP/IP stack, not sure) from BSD and then spout about all the evilness that Unix must be.
Linux and UNIX groupies like you give the community a bad name.
I use Linux (and other unices or clones) because it suits me. Unix works for what I want it to do, and it works well. That makes me a groupie, eh? Might want to rethink that
I'm typing this in Windows XP right now, so obviously I must not have too much of a problem with Microsoft's products themselves. What I do disagree with is their actions as a corporation. There is so much potential for Microsoft to be an asset to the computing industry it's not funny, but so far, like every other major American corporation, they are consumed with greed. For both money and mindshare.
From the Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary:
intransitive senses : to act as a pioneer
transitive senses
1 : to open or prepare for others to follow; also : SETTLE
I never said anywhere that I thought Netscape developed the full-circle reporting technology themselves. My definition coincides with the one pasted above. That they brought auto bug-reporting technology to the mainstream, just as a lot of Unix features and programs were never developed *for* Unix, but made their name because they were introduced into one form of Unix or another.
Welcome to the real world, where the unwashed masses can't see a monopoly and illegal or immoral business procedures even when it makes front-page news.
The desktop OS (and possibly desktop computer) as we know it is doomed. Or very likely to be doomed. If the desktop computer remains roughly the same as it is today, it is likely to be overran by commodity operating systems (just as the hardware became largely a commodity market). But more likely the desktop computer will change in drastic ways sometime in the future (leaving techheads like us with a niche market of commodity hardware and software).
One way or another, Microsoft's current market will change. To maintain their business, Microsoft must also change. The trouble is, technology rarely broadcasts the next Big Thing. So that leaves Microsoft and every other tech pundit guessing.
But any good pundit knows how to play the odds. The strategy is to figure out what the possibilities are and cover those bases. Hedge the bets. If you can afford it.
Microsoft acts on the their guesses for future markets. Set-top boxes. PVRs. Web-based services. PDAs. Webpads. And in the Xbox... a game console (with considerably more potential than just console gaming).
If these initiatives do not provide great return, or actually loose in the market place... well, that is a luxury Microsoft can afford. They must not allow the next industry boom abandon them to being a footnote in IT industry history. They are hedging their bets.
Has anyone read Game Over - Press Start to Continue, the story of Nintendo from the 1800s until the N64 ? That was a pretty good book. How does this one compare ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1 956000/1956023.stm
If I was Microsoft, I would make Xbox2 run PC games directly. No porting needed whatsoever.
I've always wondered why there's a relativly big HD in the Xbox. Not for the stupid music options, surely. And it's way too big to save games.
The HD would make sens if a future OS upgrade would make playing PC-games possible. Cause you need a HD to install those games on.
And artists don't like to compromise their vision. So Microsoft can buy all of those it can't beat, but it will never be able to buy the true creators of games. They bought Bungie and it got them Halo : a beautiful, soulless, empty shell of a game. Only sold-out, greedy companies like the one that produces the Oddcrap world are sick enough to believe that they can make it no matter who they employ. Oh sure, MS can buy all the intellectual property they can get their hands on but what's stopping the star authors to move to a different company? Money. Yes, MS has a lot of that but not everyone is for sale ! "Mario, do you know who your real father is ?" "Aaaaaaaaaaaah!!!" "Good. Now drop those silly pants."
What about the one where Microsoft also tried to buy Sega? Or the one where Nintendo and Sega were discussing a merger, or was it Nintendo buying over Sega - I can't remember now... Imagine this... Microsoft buys over Sony. Then they get to be a monopoly in electronic goods division too - Microsoft TVs, VCRs, DVD players, discmans, PS2s... wow... what a wonderful world it would be... NOT.
UNIX was around long before the first VAX.
The point to Multics was security.
UNIX is software. VAX is hardware. I'm not at all sure how it could be possible for software to "borrow tons" from hardware.
The only things that UNIX stole from multics was users.
Might be more accurate so say that UNIX stole some excellent developers.
IIRC the only users that were stolen were the creators of UNIX.
Actually, thats not quite correct. To be a great success in the Console market, they could do so without Japan as long as they get a majority of the market in Europe as well as the US.
Japan would be a great help for microsoft, but the culture clash would probably kill them there, as it may already be in the process of doing. Microsoft gravitates towards pleasing the majority, and likes to stay Mainstream. In Japan, there is a greater tolerance for Niche markets. After all, could you picture Microsoft getting behind a game where you are a mosquito in a girl's room, and your trying to bite her without being swatted? Such a game already exists in Japan.
But in Europe, the strategy of sticking to the mainstream will be much more successful. The culture clash will be reduced. All Microsoft has to do to win a good market share in Europe is make sure that the big name titles are released very close to the US release date. If the newest titles arrive on the X-Box 2 months before they arrive on the PS2 or the GameCube, they will win that market. And all that would need to be done to insure that is guarantee that all the "Big" titles are devoloped with the French, German, Spanish, Portugese, Sweedish, and other major languages kept in mind from day one.
END COMMUNICATION
...'cause they never get anything right unless they wait until someone else does it and then buys the whole company.
When I was working at Intuit in the mid-90's, MS tried to buy us. Intuit's stock price went so high after it was announced that the price was going to be pretty steep. Between that and the Justice Dept investigating the deal, Bill backed out.
The story of how it came to be is interesting, though. MS did the usual "Hey, someone, somewhere is successful at something. We should own that market!" and created MS-Money to compete with us. Money 1 and 2 were pretty pathetic, but competition really began when Money 3 started to gain market share. That is to say, people who found it bundled on their new Gateway didn't go buy Quicken after trying Money.
"Online transactions" was the big buzzword in those days and Intuit had just purchased a transaction clearing house (I forget the name). The thing is, though, Intuit and MS had both been negotiating with the company in secret. Intuit knew about MS, but MS didn't know about Intuit. When Bill found out that a) we bought the company and b) they let themselves be bought for less just so they wouldn't be bought by MS, Bill decided the only thing to do was disband the MS-Money group and buy Intuit.
Quitters never prosp...uh...well I guess they do!
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and the HQ of Kemco. That's the company that makes games (and other stuff) not coffee.
It seems that MS was pursuing many different strategies with xbox..
1. Home Entertainment
2. Home Electronics
but they forgot something that most game developing companies know..
The dev culture that produces a high quality game comes from a highly effiicent small management team that stays out of game devlopers way..
MS is not known for this..
Notice when Bungie was bought, MS gave the reason that they needed xbox develoeprs for the purchase, that once Bungie was neck deep in the mS management mire that Halo took some extra years to ship!
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Okay okay, so I may have been a bit hard on you, I apologize. As for that ellitist attitude, well I dunno where you picked that up, since I'm honestly not that, and yes, I use WinXP too and wouldn't uninstall it even for a new version of Linux. In fact, I don't really like Linux/Unix for what it is right now. But I'm not a MS fanboy either. :-) I just was under the impression you were a Linux groupie. My bad. :-)
...so what's the use of Microsoft selling Nintendo boxes?
Supplies!
I'm at fault for sterotyping you as well, it's just that I'm starting to tire of the slashdot community as a whole. That's where the "elitist" remark came from. I'm not going to make a big fuss about it here, but from the way things get moderated these days, I'm starting to think there is some kind of Mainstram Slashdot Collective Mind(tm) at work against anyone with a differing opinion, or anyone who voices obvious but unpopular statements of fact.
But worst yet, I'm fear I'm getting sucked into it as well.
Besides, despite what I said, I could tell you weren't that bad a guy from your sig.
Somehow I think VMS would have troubles running on a PDP
64K should be enough for anybody, espectially if that's 64k data AND 64k program space.
Hmm... their best work was in the '80s... sounds about right.
Another thing to note is that it should be almost trivial for Nintendo to make a Gamecube 2 in a couple of years - the ATI/ArtX team is still together I think, and IBM is still actively developing the PPC G3 core and might even be including the GC's SIMD unit next year in generally available chips. It's a lot less challenging than designing the PS2/PS3, albeit a bit more than XBox2.
Need more be said?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
"And you know that because you read it somewhere in a magazine.
Remember, business is war. Telling stories like this makes people like you think they know what's going on."
Yah... how dare I attempt to sound informed after doing research.
"Derp de derp."
You use Hotmail, you moron!
That is helping Microsoft, you dimwit!
Hmm. So using their bandwidth, blocking their ads, and generally screwing with their system is *helping* them? ok...
I guess you could argue that i count as a user. but htey count dead accounts anyways, so why not just sit here and keep using it?
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?