It was revealed earlier this month that Microsoft attempted to buy Nintendo back in 2000, before being laughed out of the room, forcing the company to strike out on its own and create the original Xbox. A new conversation about the history of the Xbox shed some light on the company’s thought process at the time.
Last week, former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime hosted an “Industry Icons Roundtable” on Twitch as part of the tenth-annual New York Game Awards. The panel featured Fils-Aime alongside former Xbox president Robbie Bach and former Sony Computer Entertainment president Jack Tretton discussing their times as president of their respective companies.
When asked what Microsoft, a company with zero gaming experience at the time, was thinking by asking the game masters at Nintendo to work with them, Robbie Bach talked about how Microsoft simply, “Didn’t want to do the hard work.” Microsoft wanted to get in on the video games market the easy way, by partnering with someone already in it:
"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, [referring Nintendo of America and Microsoft’s headquarters both being located in Redmond, Washington] so it wasn't like we had to make a long trip to go see them."
Bach talks about how he doesn’t blame Nintendo for laughing at them, adding that at the time Microsoft “didn’t have all that much to bring to the table” when compared to Nintendo’s decades of success. He called Microsoft creating its own console “the last option.” Microsoft was successful, but at the time it was just a software company.
Designing the hardware for the Xbox was entirely new territory for Microsoft, as evidenced by how large and unwieldy the original Xbox and its controller were. Microsoft continued to struggle with the Xbox 360 and its infamous “Red Ring of Death” issue. Thankfully, it seems Microsoft finally found its footing with the Xbox One, barring the failure of the Kinect, and beyond.
It is hard to resist the allure of working with Nintendo though, as Microsoft wasn’t the only company who attempted to court the House that Mario Built. Sony also tried to work with Nintendo when it was looking to get into the video game market about a decade before Microsoft. Sony got much closer than Microsoft did, as the Nintendo PlayStation made it all the way to the prototype phase before the deal fell apart.
Still, it would be safe to argue that everything worked out for the best. Microsoft and Sony’s independent successes have completely changed the face of the gaming world through their innovations in online connectivity, approaches to storytelling in games, and more. Those innovations have forced Nintendo to differentiate themselves with unique and successful hardware like the Wii and the Switch, which Fils-Aime called a, “Make or Break” console for Nintendo in that same roundtable.
Source: Twitch