Microsoft Nintendo acquisition hopes revealed by leaked Xbox exec email
rockpapershotgun.com
rockpapershotgun.com
"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-...
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.
This... explains a lot. The user-hostile experience, the lack of innovation of their game engine, the ability to buy fantastic reviews. I never knew the two were connected.
Halo franchise is a good example of Microsoft culture wrecking a game
Nintendo does the same for many of their games as well. Smash is developed by Bandai Namco and Sora Lts, Paper Mario is developed by Intelligent Systems, Pokémon is developed by Game Freak. These companies have various connections with Nintendo, like Microsoft have with their publishing game studios.
Nintendo does develop their core IP in-house though.
Nintendo seems to be a better guiding hand when working with external studios. Look at Silicon Knights output when partnering with Nintendo vs. MS for example. Or well, Rare for that matter.
What do you think will happen to Nintendo if they are assimilated by such a company and milked for all they are worth? Mario Odyssey 2 will be an open world live service game riddled with bugs and missing features like the ability to jump.
Have you already completely forgotten the launch of the Wii U?
Didn't everyone?
You say that like you didn’t just stop at two games.
They managed to kill Halo, they bought Rare in 2002 only to slack off for 2 decades
They still struggle to sell consoles despite having infinite cash and having spent an obscene amount in marketing
They launched 2 SKUs this gen, yet they couldn't release 1st party games for couple years, despite having bought a plethora of studios
Players have chosen, why should they still manage to buy their way in? They proved they are incompetent and incapable of moving the industry forward (even HW, proprietary storage expansion, same mistake as Sony's PSVIta era, generic controller vs Dualshock 5's gyro,haptic,speaker)
2 SKUs this gen, this is a out of touch move, they couldn't even anticipate the obvious mobile/handheld market boom (genshin), they are busy trying to buy their way in, it makes them in-flexible (rare W pun)
Honestly, both Valve / Nintendo (let's not forget that they also plan to buy Valve, according to the leaked email), are better the way they are, an acquisition by anyone would be a stupid idea and a huge mistake, for both companies and for the consumer
And let's not forget how they fucked up their Surface brand too, let's stop trying to put Microsoft everywhere
And let's not mention how horrible the Microsoft Store still is today
The last one, Starfield, was undercooked on all fronts: narrative, gameplay and technologically.
Halo was a huge disappointment.
So that leaves Forza and Flight Sim.
A track record like that in any other situation would get you a one way trip to the unemployment office.
They're slowly dethatching themselves from the console HW and moving to selling services the same way the detached from Windows and Office as the core products and made more money selling O365 and Azure subscriptions including their arch nemesis Linux.
That's why they keep selling CoD to the competitor's Sony PlayStation instead of making it an Xbox excusive like Sony and fans feared they would. People, and Sony, still don't get it, that Microsft's new business model is monetizing IPs and services, not selling more console HW thanks to exclusives like the old days. They'll probably make more money form Candy Crush than Sony makes from Last of us on PlayStation.
Holding on to the "console war" ("muh console sold more than your console!") is just silly and outdated. The big money is now gonna be in IP and services, not selling console HW, and Apple also knows this which is why it focuses more on new services for existing customers (ApleTV, credit cards, SOS satelite, etc) and less on selling more iPhones to new customers as the hardware market is already saturated.
Nintendo will outlast the Xbox, but Microsoft will outlast Nintendo.
Source: trust me bro?
Microsft's Xbox division saw ~15 billion of revenue while Nintendo saw 12 billion revenue last year.
From MSs perspective Xbox is just a lockdown gaming PC tied to their store
> Holding on to the "console war" ("muh console sold more than your console!") is just silly and outdated. The big money is now gonna be in IP and services
Perhaps, but I'm pretty sure that Nintendo is aware of the value of their IP, given they've used the exclusivity of their IP to sell merchandise and hardware for what, 40 years now? If in the future, there isn't enough money in selling hardware, and keeping a slice off the money from games release on their hardware, they'll still have a very deep well of IP they can monetize in a number of ways.
Nokia didn’t have Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Splatoon, Metroid, etc.
Also what launched that is a game changer like the iPhone? What did I miss?
No big company is invincible just because it's old and makes a lot of money today.
/sarcasm
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?
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.
Lets hope this doesn't happen. Microsofts' aggressive business practices and its classist culture are really undeserving of future childrens' devoted eyeballs ..
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.
Disney? Microsoft? Apple? Musk? The US Gov't? The Seattle Mariners?
All of them would kill Nintendo.
Nintendo lives and dies by their mainline characters. Sega doesn't anymore and merged with Sammy Group after their failures with Saturn and Dreamcast; and Sega of Japan really didn't like Sonic the Hedgehog as a character that much - as evidenced by how much less popular he is in Japan than America. Microsoft could lose every major Xbox franchise and have it only be, what, ~10%-20% on their stock reports as a whole company?
Whereas, if Nintendo lost Mario, the blow would be catastrophic. Just ask Sega - they lost over 200 Sonic the Hedgehog characters due to legal mistakes (Ken Penders incident).
Honestly, I don't the loss of Mario would be catastrophic. What would be is _how_ they "lost" Mario - presumably through bad games and other properties.
Less than even that probably, since you're not talking about Xbox revenue as a whole, just the first party IP.
25% of Microsoft's revenue right now comes from a huge bucket of items:
> Windows commercial and cloud products, Windows OEM, Surface, search and advertising, and Xbox
First party IP (including their game studios like Bethesda, not just Xbox studios) probably puts you in the single digits for revenue for the company.
> Whereas, if Nintendo lost Mario, the blow would be catastrophic.
Completely agree. Nintendo's ecosystem is such that Mario and Zelda sell hardware, which then they get licensing fees from third party titles that people are buying, because they want more than just Mario and Zelda.
Exactly. They’re opening a Super Nintendo theme park at Universal Studios soon and it looks exactly like what you’d expect a Nintendo theme park to look like. Now close your eyes and imagine what an Xbox theme park would have… all I can think of is maybe Master Chief? Whatever it is, it sounds boring comparatively. The Xbox brand is more hardcore-gamer-hardware… not the Xbox Universe of characters and worlds that Nintendo has built over the last 40 years. For Nintendo to shift those characters and worlds onto other hardware would completely devalue their brand
In fact I’d argue Nintendo would be better off, now being able to make games without worrying about hardware as everything would be playable across a billion plus devices.
I'm pretty sure that Nintendo employees disagree with you. They strongly believe in the value of the holistic approach combining its hardware and software. And Apple (or whatever US big techs) will definitely not change iPhone design just for Mario or Zelda.
Not to mention I never said a hypothetical Nintendo acquisition would mean they don’t still make their own input devices compatible with of course Apple devices. See beats for example
Apple generally leaves its companies alone. Look at beats for example.
If Nintendo would be acquired I suspect the only changes you’d see are ads for Apple services when visiting Nintendo.com or playing their games.
> You lack imagination.
No, I lack frustration over Apple not owning Nintendo. Enjoy it.
This just isn’t true.
Also, a game being playable on a billion devices is a turn-off, not a turn-on. Nintendo's hardware/software integration is SO tight that part of the game experience would die if it wasn't on a Nintendo device. Plus, I don't want big console games being made with players on mobile phones in mind. If you want a Nintendo experience, you go to a Nintendo platform. Imagine if the next Mario Kart had to abandon a bunch of features so the game could also be played on an iPhone. That would suck.
That's why games from PS4/Xbox One can be ported to Switch easily.
They could just get Nintendo games on Xbox and PC, or gamepass.
That would benefit consumers greatly, if Nintendo games were on other platforms.
There's basically no way to operate a company without benefiting from some government.
In a way, everyone know of the US because everyone needs Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc. When you talk about Huawei, you acknowledge China as a powerhouse in phone and tech. When you mention TSMC, you have to remember about Taiwan. etc.
This does not fit neatly onto a spreadsheet or make for a good HN-type answer, but cultural values, religious values, family values, overall different social contracts, etc are perfectly valid levers that will constantly bite you if you are only interested in your personal abilities or things that can be quantified on a spreadsheet, esp when working with people of other countries.
- job opportunities for domestic employees
- knowledge concentration that might otherwise disappear (i.e. brain drain) and lessen the quality of domestic education
- economic effects, more so if you subscribe to trickle down economics and take into account potential loss of jobs, which means loss of pay and loss of income tax and loss of spending elsewhere etc.
- prestige that can be useful for diplomatic purposes
On top of that there could also be cultural or country specific reasons.
In collectivist cultures the prestige can translate into national pride or the company and its brands can be part of the national identity.
Often in those countries the legacy of a company can also be important. Companies that are decades, centuries or even thousands of years old are held in high regard.
This can go so far that taking over your parent’s hundreds year old family business making matcha can be more prestigious than being, say, a doctor or lawyer.
The cultural driven values are hard to explain if you’re not a part of it, but that doesn’t make them less valid for those people.
It’s how most Americans value freedom of speech above all else, taking the bad (hate speech) with the good despite non-Americans not necessarily understanding it. Or the reverse, how most Europeans value banning hate speech, taking the bad (risking further restrictions) with the good, despite most Americans not understanding it b
Both have a cultural historical context, but in isolation without it it’s something that an outsider might not understand.
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)
(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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
You can do this on PC with emulators if you want to. It's probably not "legal" but if you have already paid for a copy of the game there isn't much harm in it.
Rare had some absolutely excellent games on Nintendo consoles. Noticeably, they went to shit when MSFT got them.
Don't get me wrong, I (and my family) own a GameBoy, GameBoy Colour, DS, DSi, brother has a Switch and he's happy with it. While I carry DSi with me with Tetris which I love. But I dream of a brighter day.
It's really quite sad.
At least that has been my experience. Microsoft hasn't done anything that made me angry enough to remember in quite a while, multiple years. The last thing that's on my mind that Microsoft did that was negatively received was Windows 8 and that was quite a while ago.
Could just be my ignorance. But I did submit the original comment knowing that it'll get downvoted to oblivion, so it's okay.
I still welcome Microsoft's acquisition of Nintendo.
Microsoft's evilness is the ocean that you swim in. You do not see it because it just looks like The Way Things Have Always Been to you.
The entire PC ecosystem—indeed, the entire tech world—is worse because of Microsoft's monopolistic behavior in the 1990s. We are still stuck with, at best, a desktop platform triopoly (is that a word?), and the big "Microsoft vs Apple" paradigm contributed greatly, I would argue, to the mindset that led to us having a mobile OS duopoly today.
If not for Microsoft actively, aggressively, and, above all, illegally throwing their weight around in the 1990s to make sure they were the only option for most people, we could very easily have had a half-dozen different OSes with open standards governing interoperability between them.
“The point of view of a normal person” is not a good barometer of harm to society. Companies spend truckloads of money on PR and hiding their harms from the general public. We should reward the ones who do good, not the ones who are skilful at hiding they’re harmful.
How about everything around Windows 11? All the TPM stuff?
How about training their AI model on _private_ github code?
What about removing ability to purchase office products since subscriptions make more money?
What has Nintendo done? DMCAd some fan projects that used their IP and assets and had few Youtube videos taken down? Sure that seems about the same. On other topic I saw today on my way to work someone throw trash out their car window, what a dick! At least <insert your (least) favorite dictator> did it years ago!