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Former Chief Xbox Officer opens up about approaching Nintendo for a buyout during the original Xbox days
Just a couple weeks back, we shared a story about Microsoft looking to purchase Nintendo and make them a second party developer for the Xbox. As you might remember, Nintendo apparently laughed Microsoft's execs out of the office, and obviously the deal never came to be. Now we have a little more insight into the situation.
In a Twitch discussion with Robbie Bach, former Chief Xbox Officer, we get to learn more on why Microsoft was going after Nintendo. It seems Microsoft was trying every approach they could think of before going all-in on the Xbox, and scooping up Nintendo was just one of the paths forward. Check out Mr. Bach's comments below.
"In the early days of the Xbox concept, Microsoft didn't want to do the hard work - that just wasn't something we knew how to do and so the idea was we were looking for partners. We talked to all the PC manufacturers, we talked to Sega and so we went and talked to Nintendo - they were the big kids on the block for sure, and by the way, they were across the street from our offices, so it wasn't like we had to make a long trip to go see them."
"So we had a conversation and the reaction we got was probably what we expected. You know, Microsoft didn't have all that much to bring to the table, Nintendo was successful and has always been sort of a self-contained company - does a lot of their own content, but Bob and his team explored every angle."
"Ultimately, we decided to go into the hardware, which was sort of the last option and I know that sounds kinda goofy, but we weren't a hardware company and so for us to decide we wanted to manufacture hardware was a huge commitment. And we tried a lot of different ways to not do that and in the end, we had to do that ourselves."