It is well known that today the relationship between Nintendo and Microsoft is very good, and it is that the North American company has brought several of its titles to Nintendo Switch. Although Microsoft and the Japanese have changed their policies over the years, they have had a curious history in the past.
For that, we have to go back to the first Xbox, which arrived on the market in 2001. At that time, they wanted to obtain a large catalog by buying studios, to have a good catalog of exclusives. This is something that we can see hasn’t changed much, although before they point to much bigger companies such as EA, Square Enix or Nintendo
Nintendo didn’t want Microsoft to take back the hardware
Through Bloomberg An interview before the Xbox anniversary has been revealed. In it, it was revealed how some of the interviews were, such as Square Enix felt they offered very little, or EA only responded with a No thanks.
The most interesting thing comes with the creators of Super Mario, and is that at the time they had the meeting to talk about it, they laughed the whole hour that the meeting lasted
Steve introduced us to Nintendo to see if they would consider selling. They broke their ass. Imagine a time when someone is laughing at you, this is how the meeting went.
Nintendo came to our building in January 2000 to work out the details of a joint where we gave it all of the Xbox specs. The idea was … You are so much better at Mario and other games. Why don’t you let us take care of the material? But it does not work
Nintendo does not discuss confidential conversations with other companies.
As we know, little by little they are buying more and more companies, the acquisition of Rare being perhaps the best known at the time. Since then, Microsoft has learned more about which companies it can buy and which ones offer them the best qualities.