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Comment by Impossible | Hacker News Reader

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....

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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...

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...

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

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

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

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).

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