Microsoft Publishes 1999 Letter From Failed Attempt To Buy Nintendo
Nintendo would later 'laugh their asses off' at the proposal
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Microsoft Publishes 1999 Letter From Failed Attempt To Buy Nintendo
- Thread starter stormfire
- Start date
kotaku.com
User Banned (1 day): Platform warring
and games be on good hardware.
I kinda want to see their meetings with Sega, it feels like it almost happened but they reached some kind of compromise instead
Microsoft: No Internet? We have a product called the Nintendo Wii U
yeah i assumed it was a misspelling of arrange/arranged but then found arrign is a word, but seems to be specifically regarding law/court. ordering miyamoto to stand at the court of halo i guess.
Ed Fries, one of the founding fathers of Xbox, also posted his notebook from when they were preparing to launch the original Xbox. In it you can see that he was trying to acquire blizzard. In fact, he responds later and says he actually tried twice.
And of course we remember the infamous story of Microsoft being like one signature away from buying Squaresoft but at the last minute they asked for way more money stating they made in error in their valuation.
And of course we remember the infamous story of Microsoft being like one signature away from buying Squaresoft but at the last minute they asked for way more money stating they made in error in their valuation.
That would have been a gargantuan purchase at the time, even today by any measure. Crude math shows Nintendo had a marketcap of ~$20B in October 1999 - add a premium and it would have cost MS $23B - $25B to complete.
Edit: Also by far the largest MS acquisition at the time. Nothing came close until LinkedIn in 2016.
Edit: Also by far the largest MS acquisition at the time. Nothing came close until LinkedIn in 2016.
yeah, i imagine its supposed to be 'arrange'. i was just kidding about the autocorrect. i dont think that would happen. (also, did autocorrect even exist in 99?)
There's no way of knowing what would have happened, but I am so, so glad Microsoft failed to acquire these companies.
...I looked this up and I never heard of this until now. Is this a joke? Where did that article come from?
It's plain racism. Yellow = Asian = Nintendo rejecting the offer.
Edit: Missed the tiny part too. Yeah straight racist.
I love what-if info like this. I wish the letter was easier to read though.
Idk, I agree on Square, but seeing how Blizzard developed... maybe they could've used some more strict oversight.
Oh yeah, I didn't even see Blizzard there, I meant Nintendo and Square. Blizzard was already apparently toxic decades ago.
I vaguely remember rumours of Microsoft/Blizzard. Could be message board speculation from the early 00s.
The Square Soft one seems a bit wild considering Sony had equity in Square for a while (as did EA?).
And be shut down as a studio during the latter half of the 360 era.
For anyone wondering about the yellow balls, it was a fake interview attributed to Yamauchi :
Never seen such a wild ride from such a short thread on here before. History in the making. Glad Nintendo is free from botNET
For anyone wondering about the yellow balls, it was a fake interview attributed to Yamauchi :
I laughed so hard at this article, thank you for sharing. 😂
Is that satiric and parodic like The Onion? Can't be real right?
Edit: Yep, it's written in the article, missed this part. ^^
Fun fact is, if MS tried that like 1 or 2 years later the deal would probably be a success since Square was really in trouble financially.
I'm so glad this never happened. I hope present-day MS recognizes how terrible this would have been for both parties involved.
I found the WIRED article (issue 02-2005, Page 74) where Yamauchi himself says he said this during the meeting with Ballmer.
Yeah just saw the article linked above, my bad didn't know it was a meme. It's not real BTW.
It's still not an appropriate thing to quote as a joke. Never mind that the quote itself isn't real.
Phew. Thank goodness they didn't acquire neither Nintendo nor Square. Very glad they are still independent.
Wait-- are you saying someone went through the hassle of making several fake pages of a WIRED Magazine article? I'm looking at the scans and it looks pretty legit. Someone went through a lot of trouble if this is fake.
I'm referencing this article a poster above linked: https://www.theregister.com/2005/01/07/ballmer_nintendo_ceo/
It was a hoax interview posted at Wired or Gamerah like 16 or so years ago. And people took the bait and believed it at the time.