Microsoft Nintendo acquisition hopes revealed by leaked Xbox exec email

[jmkd]

You only need to look at the culture clash of Microsft and Rare to see what a bad idea this would be,

"Microsoft purchased the developer in 2002, and the Stampers departed in 2007. The family atmosphere of the 90s, when Chris and Tim sat in on interviews and left their talented developers to work unhindered, offering occasional golden nuggets of advice, was long gone. “Microsoft and Rare was a bad marriage from the beginning,” Rare’s Martin Hollis told Eurogamer in 2012. “The groom was rich. The bride was beautiful. But they wanted to make different games, and they wanted to make them in different ways.”[0]

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/games/2023/aug/07/ultimate-rare-...

[baby]

acquisitions are always hard

[TechPlasma]

What really stood out to me was his misunderstanding about the growth priorities of the board of Nintendo. Nintendo is a stable company. It doesn't need constant growth to succeed. Something that Microsoft probably could learn a thing or two from a much older and still successful business.

[sharts]

You never have to chase growth if continue to improve your products in a substantive way and give customers what they want.

This is a far cry from Microsoft that, for every step or two forward, there’s always at least a step backward in some crucial way.

But this is generally the culture of American companies and society where grift is rewarded for some reason.

[Apreche]

The one thing we've learned from these leaks of Microsoft documents is that the XBox people have a shockingly wrong understanding of their own industry. I guess that explains their lack of success, at least relative to the competition.

[turndown]

Agreed. They don’t know what to do with xbox yet think they can steer Nintendo or valve(let alone manage to purchase them.)

[miffy900]

It's also sad that they're even considering this. They first considered this 20+ years ago before they launched the first Xbox; it was more plausible back then, compared than now, considering Nintendo's strengths with the Switch. Imagine if MS had succeeded with acquiring Nintendo back in the 2000's - I'm certain the Switch would never see the light of day.

[sirwhinesalot]

Let us hope this never happens. MS culture would destroy Nintendo in short notice.

[personalityson]

What culture? Microsoft makes great games

[FirmwareBurner]

Don't worry, Nintendo is pretty skilled at destroying itself the way it treats its fans, by suing them.

[fidotron]

The detail about using the investment fund to gain influence on the board is particularly interesting. This tactic is also used by other FAANGs as a way to evaluate (and exfiltrate) value in potential acquisitions.

Microsoft themselves seem to have fallen into a never ending extreme scale build vs buy argument beloved of current dev culture, which wants to build just enough internally to make negotiations interesting but then just use capital muscle to buy the real thing, which they will then mismanage to destruction, requiring more, and repeat. This disturbing tendency has infested so much of US business it is why I don’t see the whole manufacturing onshoring working, as who wants to do something when you can just own it?

[etempleton]

This leak likely killed any chance Nintendo would even entertain the talks and may setback Microsoft-Nintendo’s relationship. But Microsoft never have had a chance to buy Nintendo and likely never will.

I don’t think Nintendo would ever sell unless they absolutely have to. And they are in a position of strength right now. They have some of the most valuable IP in the world and are just waking up to all of the opportunities they have to leverage that IP with moves into toys, theme parks, and movies and a Switch 2 is likely coming next year.

[boffinAudio]

For me the key point in this discussion is the phrase "consumer relevance" .. Microsoft seem to be aware that they are becoming less and less relevant, and making big buys in the gaming industry seems to be a very unique means by which they can maintain their hegemony.

Lets hope this doesn't happen. Microsofts' aggressive business practices and its classist culture are really undeserving of future childrens' devoted eyeballs ..

[skywhopper]

"Nintendo's future exists off of their own hardware" reveals just how poorly their competition understands Nintendo's success.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

I don't think this view comes from a poor understanding of Nintendo's success. Remember when the Wii came out and people thought the motion controls sucked and games which heavily used them didn't sell well? What about Switch games which make heavy use of motion controls (e.g. Super Mario Odyssey)? Turns out those sell well today because Nintendo invested yesterday in their motion-reading capabilities: hardware.

Certainly they see a lot of success due to choices around branding and going the Disney route of protecting their rights to Mickey Mouse^W^W Mario at all costs but they also see a lot of success from hardware innovations they've made in gaming.

[wslh]

Now we hope that all Nintendo consoles will be retro compatible until Windows 1.0. I would add to the Game & Watch series.

[tehsauce]

Oof, right as the switch demolished the xbox in hardware sales.

[underseacables]

Am I the only one that feels uneasy about Microsoft acquiring Nintendo?

[bombcar]

I'd feel uneasy about ANYONE acquiring Nintendo, they're the only independent game console manufacturer; and arguably the only independent game manufacturer of note.

Disney? Microsoft? Apple? Musk? The US Gov't? The Seattle Mariners?

All of them would kill Nintendo.

[dougmwne]

They also wanted to buy Valve. Obviously the Microsoft execs are living in a fantasy land.

[stale2002]

It doesn't have to be a full acquisition.

They could just get Nintendo games on Xbox and PC, or gamepass.

That would benefit consumers greatly, if Nintendo games were on other platforms.

[AdmiralAsshat]

I don't think Nintendo wants to be acquired. And I imagine a hostile takeover would go over very poorly.

[HDThoreaun]

Pretty sure the japanese government feels the same way.

[_jplc]

How reasonable or delusional really are all these private ramblings? Because it looks like they would buy half the world if they let them do so.

[goosedragons]

It would have seemed sort of reasonable in 2013 where the Wii U was clearly struggling and the 3DS was barely gaining decent traction but still lagged against the DS. In late 2020 it just seems sort of insane when the Switch had already beat the lifetime sales the Xbox One in 3 years and brushing up against 360 numbers, Animal Crossing had a launch bigger than Halo 3 IIRC and Mario Kart 8 was still trucking along regularly in the sales chart despite already being over a half decade on.

[gjsman-1000]

... and that was the day that all the executives conveniently forgot there was no way in hell that the government of Japan, the people of Japan, or the FTC would allow such a thing to happen.

[tmtvl]

Remember when Abe Shinzō (requiescat in pace) dressed as Mario at the Olympics? It's hard to overstate how important Nintendo is in Japanese popular culture.

[RajT88]

Nintendo themselves would never let it happen.

It would be a catastrophic blow to their independent brand.

> or the FTC would allow such a thing to happen

Gonna disagree with you there.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/how-the-ftc-f...

(By many metrics Activision is a bigger gaming company than Nintendo)

[tpmx]

Yeah, Japan is different than the currently relatively meak US. Fiercely nationalistic. There is no way this would be allowed to happen.

[theclansman]

They already tried to buy Nintendo in the early 2000s and got laughed at.

[shodan757]

"But our BoD has seen the full writeup on Nintendo (and Valve) and they are fully supportive on either if opportunity arises as am I."

(emphasis mine)

Oh please God no, not Valve. MS has changed pretty dramatically since the Gates/Ballmer days, but Valve is way too valuable to computer gaming to be owned by a company like MS. Luckily Valve is privately owned, and even if they were public, their valuation would/should be pretty insane. So I think anyone buying Valve is unlikely.

[pkulak]

Valve may be the single greatest asset to desktop Linux at this point (after Redhat, possibly), and it would be such a shame to have all that destroyed.

[hot_gril]

Even if I still played video games, I wouldn't care what happens to Valve. They were the reason some games forced you to install this Steam nonsense and launch it every time to run em, which seemed to just be for DRM purposes. MS would probably do something just as annoying, though.

[turquoisevar]

It doesn’t just seem to be hopes, but actually taking steps in acquiring equity to play the long game:

“I say "until recently" as our former MS BoD member ValueAct has been heavily acquiring shares of Nintendo […] and I've kept in touch with Mason Morfit as he's been acquiring. It's likely he will be pushing for more from Nintendo stock which could create opportunities for us. Without that catalyst I don't see an angle to a near term mutually agreeable merger of Nintendo and MS and I don't think a hostile action would be a good move so we are playing the long game.”

The hubris is also palpable:

“It's just taking a long time for Nintendo to see that their future exists off of their own hardware. A long time.... :-)”

And then there’s the matter of them contemplating buying TikTok: https://www.threads.net/@techemails/post/CxYy4BdS99n/

MS/Spencer is acting like a teenager that just got their hands on their parent’s credit card.

The message is clear, they’re on the lookup to buy all kinds of stuff in an attempt to conglomerate everything under the MS umbrella.

All the nonsense uttered to appease regulators during the BGS and ABK is just that, nonsense to reassure regulators.

[jauntywundrkind]

Notably a >3 year old email, at this point.

Nintendo is incredibly litigious & defensive. They're both loved, but one of the most carefully managed companies. Most of their platform is 1st party software.

Personally I can't think of a worse more dangerous acquisition for Microsoft. Microsoft was won a lot of trust over the last decade by participating nicely in the intertwingularizing world, by supporting devs and power users, by having a useful helpful web browser & web standards team, by having great open community around azure and wsl and others. Having an arm of their business suddenly operating in old world cut throat tight modes of operation like Nintendo would be a terrible look. And Nintendo wouldn't be Nintendo without that totalized control they've spent decades growing into.

[summerlight]

I remember the report that when Microsoft initially planned to enter the console space they wanted to recruit Miyamoto with 10x salary. The proposal was outright rejected because he cannot do anything meaningful without the team and culture he had been building over decades. In the creative industry, teams and cultures are (almost) everything.

Nintendo will unlikely keep its team and culture when it's acquired by some random US big techs. Japan and US just have so different corporate cultures at their fundamental level. Think about a hypothetical scenario; another big economical crisis is looming and Satya mandated Nintendo to cut 5~10% of its HQ employees. Would Nintendo keep its unique culture after its first ever lay-off? I don't think so.

[NickC25]

I have a (now retired) relative who spent a majority of his career as a high-level MSFT exec, and he knew a lot of the OG Xbox guys. As a kid in the early 2000s who grew up with Nintendo consoles, I asked him over the years more than once why there was no effort to purchase Nintendo.

His answer every time was a simple "the Japanese corporate culture and the American corporate culture have differences in ways that money simply cannot overcome"

As much as I'd love to be able to play Mario or Zelda in 4k 60fps, or play FZero or Smash Brothers over Xbox Live, it's just not gonna happen.

[NegativeLatency]

I hope this does not happen, but maybe we'd finally get some remakes of Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong 64 and other good games by Rare

[NickC25]

Would love for this to happen. Might even get a 3rd Banjo-Kazooie game out of it, too...I could dream but another Conker's BFD, Killer Instinct, or even Perfect Dark would be fun too.

Rare had some absolutely excellent games on Nintendo consoles. Noticeably, they went to shit when MSFT got them.

[cush]

In what world would any gaming hardware manufacturer not consider how they could acquire the best games? As if there aren’t comparable emails in Sony inboxes. Seems like a very expected line of thinking and strategy for any exec

[joe__f]

When I looked at this I thought the title had been shortened and the meaning was obfuscated. The idea that Nintendo would sell to Microsoft is pretty laughable to me.