It seems that Microsoft had approached Nintendo, wanting to acquire the Japanese company before the release of the original Xbox, according to a Bloomberg article.
The article, which is dedicated to the story behind the Xbox brand, includes some anecdotal stories from many of the people responsible for creating the Xbox, including a Nintendo purchase attempt. The meeting, which was requested by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, did not go as planned.
In particular, Kevin Bachus, one of the founders of Xbox, says that Ballmer "forced" them to meet with Nintendo, to consider the possibility of acquiring the latter from the former. The reaction from Nintendo was just to laugh. "Imagine for a second someone laughed at you. That's how this meeting went. "
Microsoft also approached Nintendo in 2000 for a joint venture, with Nintendo focusing on game development while Microsoft handling the hardware component.
"We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work out the details of a consortium where we gave them all the technical specifications of the Xbox," said Bob McBreen, former head of business development. The data was that in terms of hardware Nintendo was bogged down and left behind, especially compared to the Sony PlayStation. So the idea was to say, 'Listen, you're a lot better at playing Mario and all that stuff. Why not let us deal with the hardware? "But it did not work."
In addition to the above, the article contains some other great stories, such as efforts to acquire Square, Midway and even EA, as well as a deal with Konami full of alcohol.
Microsoft was certainly bold in its efforts to enter the video game market about twenty years ago, and things do not seem to have changed much since then - recall that a few months ago Microsoft acquired Bethesda in one of the major deals made in the industry.
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