Hacker News Reader

Comment by mywittyname | Hacker News Reader

> I don't know what Nintendo would get out of being acquired,

Money. Old companies are merged, acquired, or spun-off all the time.

It's completely possible that Nintendo would prefer to spin off portions of their business which, while profitable, no longer align with their primary markets. Consider companies like General Electric; they started off producing equipment around electric power generation, installation, and use (lightbulbs and appliances), then they got into television, radio, computing, jet engines, health insurance, etc. Over the years they've spun off many of these divisions and today's GE looks nothing like OG GE.

View on HN

Japanese corporate operations are quite different, historically, than the US. For example, Japan has over 33,000 companies that are over 100 years old. Many are several hundred years old. The oldest is around 1300 years old, I think. Continuously operating.

Obviously most of these are not 'technology' companies, but the culture of corporate creation/destruction/merger is somewhat different.

One of the things that really sets them apart is Keiretsu[1]. Seemingly competing firms often work together for their common benefit in the name of Keiretsu. It is very "foreign" and strange from a US cultural standpoint, but it is also why so many Japanese companies last as long as they do.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keiretsu

It is important to note that the Keiretsu are split vertically, no two companies within a keiretsu should be direct competitors.

At least such was the case. A major counter example is Mitsui and Sumitomo. The Mitsui and Sumitomo banks merged, which triggered partial merges of other Keiretsu companies: except the real estate. Mitsui Real Estate and Sumitomo Real Estate still operate as competitors. Both developing new housing complexes and office towers.

> Over the years they've spun off many of these divisions and today's GE looks nothing like OG GE.

That's why today's GE is close to bankruptcy and easily threatened by corporate raiders. Arguably if they has stayed focused on their core competency of high quality cutting edge engineering instead of stupid financial engineering, they'd have stayed releva6ans powerful.

You might want to check the "portions" of Nintendo business to realize why not. Even in core console gaming, they're notorious for not actually owning many studios, including some you would assume they do given how long they're worked together.

Notoriously, Nintendo didn't own Rare (who was a big studio for Nintendo bound games), didn't want to buy when they wanted to sold, and they ended up at Microsoft which is an acquisition that's very hard to spin as a success.

No kidding, Nintedo doesn't even own Intelligent Systems and those guys used to develop the Devkit tooling.

Get this: IS used to work from inside Nitendo's own factory.

Granted, while Nintendo does not own these companies they have strong control. Just last year Nintendo moved all their developers in Tokyo into a single tower.

I wonder if this is related to what someone mentioned above in the thread whereby Japanese firms seem to value implicit, mutually beneficial behavior

Likely a lot of old school politicking behind the scenes too. Especially as they’re a Kyoto company.

Is this why Game Freak is not part of Nintendo?

Nintendo did sell a business that didn't align with their primary markets, Rare. Rare generated hits for Nintendo (like Donkey Kong Country), but iirc, Miyamoto never liked them. From the DKC wikipedia entry:

In the years following the game's release, rumours spread that Miyamoto disliked Donkey Kong Country and found it amateurish, provoking him to create the hand-drawn art style of Yoshi's Island. He was allegedly quoted as telling Electronic Games magazine in 1995 that "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good".

Again according to wikipedia, DKC was one of the top selling SNES games, only Super Mario World and Super Mario All-Stars are higher on the list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Super_Nin....

Rare was funded by Nintendo but I don't think it was ever owned by them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_(company)

Rare was never owned by Nintendo - they were only ever a second party developer. Nintendo did provide them with significant financial resources and autonomy, however.

Another example of a company could be Game Freak and Creatures, the developers of Pokémon. Though it is now created with a joint-venture like company "The Pokémon Company" that is owned mostly by those three companies, with Nintendo owning 32%.

Interestingly enough, Nintendo studio acquisitions seem to be "rare" enough that they make news headlines, like the recent acquision of Next Level Games (makes of Luigi's Mansion 2 & 3), which will move from second-party to first-party:

https://micky.com.au/nintendo-acquires-bc-video-game-develop...

Is it really fair to count Super Mario World in the best-seller list considering it came with the console?

Why not? Everyone counted Wii Sports as the best-selling game of all time despite being a pack-in (and even today it's #4 having only been outdone by Minecraft, GTAV and Tetris Mobile).

As others mentioned, not owned by Nintendo, but also Rare was sort of spent as a creative force by the time they were purchased in 2002.

They lost a lot of developers to Free Radical.

I'm not sure what Microsoft acquired with Rare because besides Viva Pinata and Sea of Thieves the company has basically produced junk over the last eighteen years. They're not even in control of their main IP: Perfect Dark as Microsoft has parcelled that out to another studio for the reboot.

Rare did align with Nintendo’s core business - and was an exclusive Nintendo64 developer - but even Tim Stamper, co-founder of Rare, is apparently none-the-wiser...

> “One of the most interesting parts of the interview is Stamper's view on Rare's sale to Microsoft, and the question that seems to eternally be on everyone's lips: why didn't Nintendo snap up the studio beforehand? Nintendo owned almost half of the UK company, but for reasons unknown never tried to buy Rare outright, despite the fact that the Stampers were clearly on the lookout for buyers.

Stamper is at a loss as to why Nintendo didn't step in and open up its chequebook:

I've no idea why they didn't do that. I thought we were a good fit.” [1]

[1] https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/08/rare_co-founder_ha...

Couldn't edit after I saw the replies but thank you for reminding me Rare was always 2nd party. So not quite the same but Nintendo could have acquired them like Monolith Soft or Next Level Games

Reply on news.ycombinator.com