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EA Founder Predicts MS Purchase of Nintendo

New site Xbox2News.com (via Evil Avatar) has up an interview with Trip Hawkins, founder of Electronic Arts and recent AIAS inductee. During the course of the interview, he is asked what he sees as the future course for Nintendo. His answer? "My magic eight ball says they will be acquired by Microsoft within five years." Tycho has commentary on the man's forcasting abilities in today's post.

8 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. well.. by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Informative

    ea's grand plan is to just buy everything.

    surely they must think that other companies do so as well and by logic microsoft is bigger than N, so they buy them.

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  2. "Hey, Ballmer.. Why don't"... by rylin · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yeah, I'm sure MS will try again after what happened last time. . .
    http://www.gamerah.com/ver_imagen.php?id=226
    http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20547

    1. Re:"Hey, Ballmer.. Why don't"... by GreenHell · · Score: 4, Informative

      How about the comments of someone who checked with Wired, or Nintendo's own response to the article?

      Or you could, you know, go straight to the supposed source (Wired Magazine, Feb. 2005 issue), and see that it's not listed anywhere.

      --
      "I won't mod you down - I feel the need to call you a twit explicitly, rather than by implication."
  3. Re:Nintendo is not for Sale by shawb · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sony maybe? Or maybe Mitsubishi. Those guys are close to having a vertical monopoly (where you produce a little bit of everything, not so much that you have a particular market cornered.) Seriously, go take a look at Mitsubishi's website and see how many different things that company does. In addition to the TV's and automobiles that we know about (both Mitsubishi and Isuzu,) Mitsubishi does textiles, chemicals, energy, construction machines, mining, foods, production of space and aircraft equipment, financing, real estate, factory construction, IT, electronics, semiconductors, nanotech, financial consulting, New business consulting, medical care, social services and more. It seems like the only thing Mitsubishi doesn't have a hand in is entertainment media. It may make sense for them to start with video games due to the popularity in their native Japan. Although I'm not familiar enough with their business practices to guess if they'd want to break into the market with acquisitions or just start up their own division. Mitsubishi is one company I wouldn't want to have on my bad side. And I can't find any references, but from what I understand Mitsubishi is family owned.

    --
    I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
  4. Re:Lets just say by Ayaress · · Score: 3, Informative

    Those are also good reasons that Nintendo won't be bought by Microsoft. They've got dominance in the mobile market, but I'll admit (I don't like to admit, but I will) that that dominance is probably not going to last out the year.

    Even so, Nintendo's not going anywhere. They survived major screwups in the past because they're a huge company, and remember that video games aren't their only product. Nintendo's been around since 1889, and they have a lot of power behind them.

    The worst thing that I see happening to Nintendo (it's still years off if it happens, but the PSP just might be the deciding factor one way or the other) is that they'll go the way of Sega - not making systems anymore, but producing their games accross multiple other systems. They have the franchise power, and I believe they still have the genius in there somewhere to make truely new things.

    Mario on the Xbox? Pokemon on the PSP? Zelda on the PC? Hell, I never thought I'd see Sonic and Mario on the same system in my lifetime, but it's happened, and I think Sega is better for it in the long run.

  5. Re:Ha by Arctic+Dragon · · Score: 2, Informative

    General Motors owns 20% of Fuji Heavy Industries (makers of Subaru automobiles), 12% of Isuzu and 20% of Suzuki.
    Sure, they're relatively minor stakes, and Nintendo isn't a struggling automaker, but an American firm buying a Japanese one isn't so unrealistic.

  6. Re:3DO by Bustbang · · Score: 2, Informative

    I can't believe I forgot Fifa Soccer with it's wicked fun 6 player mode.

    Space hulk vengeance of the blood angles is a 3DO original,pc psx & saturn are ports.
    Snowjob is a QTVR like game.
    Killing Time had FMV in the intro and the ending.No FMV during the game.

    Actually I have a memory card and mpeg1 video adapter for the fz1 "two unused expansion ports"The modem,mpeg2 & M2 cards never materialized.

    How can you blame Trip for:

    Goldstar's rubbish game selection
    Samsung barely trying
    The no shows in AT&T,Toshiba
    The 3DO company,Panasonic,EA did most of the advertising.While other big licencee got a free ride (looking at you Goldstar/LG)

    The 3DO Game system was a group effort but everyone didn't pull their weight.So It had a early death.

    I'm happy Trip and everyone else at 3DO took the risk.It was by far my favorite game system.

  7. Re:Nintendo is not for Sale by Datamonstar · · Score: 2, Informative

    That much hurt them, but not near as much as we may have been lead to believe. The real reason behind the merger is partly due to the movie, and partly due to Japanese business ethics. The movie was a big money sink. Huge money sink, and in return all they got back was some name recognition and a suite of now out-of-date SGI computers. So Hironobu Sakaguchi, the series creator, was pushed to the side. He'd already started on Final Fantasy IX , so they allowed him to finish it up, and he'd envisioned large parts of X and the online game, but once he finally realised that he was finished at Square (he was no longer Executive Producer), he left while the Square/Enix mergers were still in the works.

    The reasons for the merger were in part, to recover loses from the movie, but Square was still very marketable and productive even after the movie. Sakaguchi had screwed up big, so they let him fade away into obscurity, all the while making a big move to control, in part, a seriously huge chunk of the RPG market. Dragon Warror, Star Ocean, and other series would become theirs to profit from, not to mention the Final Fantasy series and other sucessful ventures that Square has seen over the years.
    So, you can blame the movie all you want, and it did suck, but in the ened that wasn't the whole story on why Square and Enix merged. It's just as complex a complex story as any other and thinking that one failed venture alone, albeit a giant one, could have caused this is shallow thinking, indeed.

    --
    The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.