Let us hope this never happens. MS culture would destroy Nintendo in short notice.
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
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?
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.
You say that like you didn’t just stop at two games.
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.
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.
> 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.
From MSs perspective Xbox is just a lockdown gaming PC tied to their store
No big company is invincible just because it's old and makes a lot of money today.
/sarcasm
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?