Microsoft Tried to Buy Nintendo, Got Killed With Laughter
Over twenty years ago, Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo. However, while the Japanese were not interested in such development, they were sincerily amused by the offer. The Redmond giant also tried to buy EA, Midway and Square.
- Around 2000, Microsoft tried to buy Nintendo, but was "laughed off" by its representatives;
- Then Bill Gates' company tried for a joint venture with the Japanese to focus on creating games for Xbox, which also failed;
- The Redmond giant also tried to acquire EA, Midway and Square.
It would seem that the acquisition of Bethesda Softworks by Microsoft was a big event, shocking the entire video game industry. However, as it turns out, the company planned a much larger purchase twenty years ago. While the acquisition of Japanese Square (even before its merger with Enix) or Midway wouldn't have made such a big impression, taking Nintendo and Electronic Arts under its wings definitely would. However, Microsoft's representatives met with laugh from the Japanese and EA responded with a short "no, thanks".
This information was revealed by Kevin Bachus, former Director of external relations at Microsoft, in an interview for Bloomberg. As he revealed, Steve Balmer (former Microsoft CEO) held a meeting with Nintendo to see if the Japanese giant would consider being acquired by the Americans. However, things didn't go well for Microsoft's representatives:
"They just laughed their asses off. Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went."
However, Microsoft did not give up and in January 2000 it organized one more meeting with Nintendo representatives. This time the company tried "only" to establish cooperation, under which the creators of Xbox would be involved in developing hardware, and Nintendo would focus on creating games. As Bob McBreen, then head of business development at Microsoft, says:
"We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox. The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, “Listen, you’re much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don’t you let us take care of the hardware?” But it didn’t work out."
As nothing came out of planned cooperation with Nintendo, Microsoft was doomed to try to conquer the console market alone.
It is worth noting that the company did not give up the idea of taking over other entities, and Bloomberg's interlocutors consider the purchase of Bungie Software to be their best deal of this kind. Nevertheless, the Redmond giant had at least two more bad moves along the way. The first one was an attempt to buy the Japanese developer Square, which was unsuccessful as its banker said that the amount proposed by Microsoft was too low. Microsoft's attempt to buy Midway (known e.g. from Mortal Kombat), which considered the deal "very seriously", went only a little better. The obstacle, however, turned out to be its inability to create games for PlayStation, as well as the need to liquidate its sales department and marketing division.
