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.