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."

Comments

Nintendo franchised reimagined by Microsoft...

[Navius Eurisko]

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!"

Other Codenames Considered....

[shr3k]

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!

Nintendo didn't need the money

[Alien54]

The GameCube Eurpoe Site had a short story on this earlier:

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

Re:Nintendo didn't need the money

[NanoGator]

"Then they go to plan B - offer a similar product for free at a vastly reduced price (or free) - force them out of business - then you have a monopoly! "

Harldy a winning strategy. If MS were to drop the price of the XBOX, they'd go DEEPER into the hole on each machine sold. As it is, it costs like $400 or $500 to build one of the machines. Nintendo, however, is either close to break even point, or even making a profit on their $200 machine.

MS cannot legally undercut the price of the XBOX, it's called 'Dumping'. The FTC would strangle them over it. (In theory, so far the US gov't doesn't seem too wild about telling MS no to anything.) I vaguely remember Atari threatening to sue Sony over it when the Playstation was announced to be $200 (I think it was released at $300, though...) for similar reasons. (Anybody remember that?)

Nintendo could easily afford to drop the price of the Gamecube even farther. It'd either be extremely bold or extremely stupid of MS to try to get into a price war with them. That's not MS's biggest problem though.

XBOX just doesn't have the winning titles yet. There are some okay games for it, but they really need a Miyamoto on their side. One of the things that kind of drove me away from being a game player is the lack of imagination and thought being put into games. If MS were smart, they'd drag out every Miyamoto and RARE game ever made and devote a group to figuring out why they're fun. Then, they need to set up a division intended to make games like these. (not copy them, I mean continue the spirit of them.)

MS would be smart to make better games, that'd be a far better strategy than trying to beat them at price. That is unless they start giving away XBOX's along with the purchase of Gateway PC's....

Who Microsoft SHOULD Buy

[Rayonic]

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.

Pikachu for MS Office

[famazza]

If MS had bought Nintendo then Pikachu could be an MS Office Assistent.

THAT would be cool.

MSMari~1

[Jon_Sy]

Can you see it now?

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 .NET empire, while the courts are paid off with funding from Yoshi's magic mushroom factory.

Xbox is in trouble

[Bethor]

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.

Re:Xbox is in trouble

[alcmena]

Microsoft has absolutely no way to force anyone to buy an Xbox.

Microsoft could start bundling XBoxes with Windows.

Re:Nintendo probably tried to take advantage of MS

[Graymalkin]

Nintendo and Sony parted ways not because Sony debuted their technology as I recall. Nintendo halfway through the project decided to go with Phillips and their CD-i technology leaving Sony with a bunch of money invested into their CD system. Sony kept developing it because Ken Kutaragi bet his career on it. He thought a game console would be what Sony needed to spurn some demand for their products. Nintendo and Sony got back together about two years later but the deal broke because Sony wanted to do a stand alone system and Nintendo still wanted a add-on for the SNES.

Sony then formed their CEE division with Ken Kutaragi at the helm and launched the PSX. It became ultra popular because they managed to get the big wigs like Capcom and Konami to develop native games as well as port Arcade games to it. It whomped the shit out of the Saturn and Nintendo dropped their CD-ROM add-on plans and hooked up with SGI. I remember at the time there was a good deal of confusion as to what the fuck Nintendo was doing. You were never sure if they were making a stand alone 32-bit console or a add-on for the SNES.

Microsoft I think was in the same position as Sony was in 1992, they had an initiative to get into the game console market but wanted someone more experienced to go in with. What I think people miss is Sony is the Microsoft of Japan. Career minded folks in Japan's electronics industry don't badmouth Sony. With the PSX they were entering into a industry they had no experience in. It was only through learning from Nintendo and Kutaragi's incessant board room bowing and scraping that the PSX saw the light of day.