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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."
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!"
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!
.. 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"
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
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!?
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/
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.
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.
Notice how Nintendo is pricing their products to be cheaper than Microsoft's. Microsoft makes a move to cut prices, so does Nintendo. Nintendo now knows MS's price points, and their strategies, further enabling them to stay ahead.
I don't think Microsoft would've approached Nintendo if they weren't serious about a buyout attempt. Nintendo learned their leson from the Playstation ordeal.
MS came to Nintendo and said "This is our plan. Want to be part of it?" Nintendo said, "Maybe, tell us more." MS gives Nintendo their full strategy, at which point Nintendo blows them off.
No matter what your market position is, knowing what the costs of your competitor's product is, and what their strategy is definately helps.
What's weird is that they wanted Nintendo to throw their brand and expertise away by cancelling the GameCube and backing the very new, very experimental, very strange Xbox. Seems idiotic to me.
-Paul Komarek
"Notice how Nintendo is pricing their products to be cheaper than Microsoft's."
Correction: Notice how Nintendo is aware that parents don't want to spend a lot of money for a game system?
Their price motives have nothing to do with what they learned from MS. It has to do with the fact that $200 is far closer to an 'impulse buy' than a PS2, XBOX, or any of the other ridiculously priced systems. Even Sega knew this when they made the Dreamcast.
If you want more proof that Nintendo's pricing is a result of careful planning vs. leveraging of 'MS Price points...' (which they would not have known back in 99, heh), then crack open a GameCube, then crack open a PS2 and an XBOX. What you'll find upon opening a GameCube is that a bunch of guts won't fall out. It's a very clean, elegant design. They didn't add DVD player capability (i.e. no royalties to pay to MPEG/DVD groups...), it's small so it requires fewer resources, and there's only one main circuit board plus a riser card for the controller inputs.
Nintendo's pricing is based on knowledge of what people who buy games spend their money on, not based on what they couldn't have known about MS. Remember, it may sound great to have a DVD player built into a game machine, but this machine's main focus is kids. Parents buy the game machine. They look at price tag, not features.
"Derp de derp."
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.
"That's because the design is skimpy and lean, not because it's 'clean, elegant design.'"
Really? Then how come this 'skimpy and lean [design]' isn't getting it's butt kicked by the presumably not-so-lean XBOX? XBOX might have a little bit of power superiority over GC, but not $100 (or twice the price of the GC) better.
Nintendo *always* puts all kinds of effort into making sure that the circuitry is as elegant and simple as possible. If you don't believe me, look at the Game Boy, Nintendo 64, and SNES. They always put extra development time into this. Some would say that's why Nintendo often misses their planned launch dates.
"Derp de derp."