Xbox's Phil Spencer Was Dead Serious About Wanting To Acquire Nintendo In 2020

It'll be entertaining to see the mental gymnastics people perform to justify this level of pure greed.

Lol I continue to not understand this. If it were Sega I would get it. Sega alone arguably would have solved many if not most of Microsoft's problems with content. Where do they keep getting the idea that Nintendo is open to selling?

This is pretty awful tbh. They really out here trying to consolidate the entire gaming industry. And are willing to play "the long game" to do it.

I’m glad they didn’t. Bloody hell.

They would kill nintendo like they do every other company they buy nintendo make great games phil unlike Microsoft just trying buy everything

The comment ‘career moment’ just shows he is a suit and not a gamer as he likes to portray.

I wouldn’t like anyone to acquire Nintendo, they would lose all their charm because they wouldn’t let them be Nintendo anymore.

If hope Nintendo never sell themselves, but especially not to MS.

They mention Valve in that letter too, not just Nintendo.

@RealFrowns not greed at all, Xbox get on with Nintendo well, nothing to do with Greed.

@mac_da_man why, would be fantastic move for all involved, Nintendo would finally get it's online stuff sorted out

They'd probably ruin Nintendo if they acquired them. I would prefer if Nintendo acquired xbox instead lol.

@CutchuSlow what? No! Xbox have a great infrastructure!

I support console manufacturers buying devs or publishers to help fill gaps in their portfolio. But I would not support Ms buying nintendo, or any of the console manufacturers buying one of the others. Competition is king and we need 3 healthy competitors in the industry, so we all win.

The idea of Xbox buying Nintendo is fun until it’s not. I don’t ever see it happening; hostile or otherwise. But if it did of course the industry would suffer as one of the big 3 loses their identity. If Xbox desperately wants an asian presence (which I can understand them wanting) then stick to Sega or Square Enix. Or on a smaller scale - Mistwalker.

However - partnering with Nintendo on a smaller scale I am 100% behind. Just look at Goldeneye or Banjo etc.

Edit: after thinking about it more - there is one scenario where I would support this; and it’s if we are living in the timeline where Apple, Amazon, Google, Tencent etc become the dominant forces in gaming - with Microsoft standing alongside them. At that point I would be glad for them to have brought Nintendo with them. But yea thats a 20years from now scenario.

@Ep_13 MS would ruin what Nintendo does thats great and unique. MS should focus on what they have and make those studios perform great and produce awesome games. But ffs, keep them off Nintendo

This document is almost four years old and doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. Spencer wanted Nintendo but it didn't work out so they moved on to Activision Blizzard. This email doesn't even mention AB because it's so old that it wasn't on his radar. People are acting like it's proof Xbox is still trying to buy them.

I cannot think of anything worst then Microsoft buying Nintendo. It would destroy everything that Nintendo and its studios are.

That's not a thing that'll ever happen lol.

It is interesting how Microsoft has consistently signaled interest in Nintendo, though.

@mac_da_man fair enough, I reckon MS can help Nintendo in many other ways, lets hope for a partnership at least! They already work together in some ways. He's praising Nintendo!

Partnership is fine! Xbox and Nintendo working together,
cats and dogs living together - mass hysteria haha!
DO IT!!!

This is some Bob Iger energy.

@somnambulance Yes he shows the typical Microsoft face, monopolistic and just want to buy everyone.

Buying Nintendo would be foolish. As for Microsoft helping Nintendo, it seems to be the other way around would be more beneficial as things are currently standing...

@RedShirtRod I think the new concern with these docs is that Spencer says they're "playing the long game" until they can buy Nintendo. So while I don't think it's going to happen, it's probable that Xbox is still making attempts. They even talk about Nintendo stock.

Let's not also mention the talk about Tiktok.

Anyway, Around 2020, Nintendo had just put the Wii U in it's grave, and sharks were definitely circling if the Switch failed, which it thankfully didn't. Microsoft don't have a handheld division, it's part of why they are trying to acquire King, and quite a few people have mused about Microsoft and Nintendo entering a mutually beneficial partnership.

So, while it sounds like greed, it would be, IMHO, worse if Sony did it. They have bad blood with Nintendo, especially after the Vita didn't have as much success as they'd like. Nintendo would be a portfolio and a way to tell Nintendo that they shouldn't have done that deal with Philips way back when, and now they're still a Sony product line.

I've always said I think Microsoft and Nintendo should come up with a battle plan together. I think their 1st party IPs should do the following:

4k/8k Home versions - Xbox's current and future consoles
Portable versions - Nintendo Switch and future consoles

That way you can cover all types of gamers and play their games whichever way you'd like.

Everyone is running with this and people aren’t reading the email nor the actual date of said email. It reads like a bucket list and that’s not very realistic. And it’s old and before other purchases. It’s more like oh that’s nice.

@Kaloudz Sure but I don’t think buying Nintendo is one of them.

@themightyant and people don’t actually read before freaking out. People need to calm down and read the full emails. -_-

All well I don’t want to hear Xbox isn’t serious about Japan now.

Nintendo would have much more powerful hardware, a real working online infrastructure, party/voice chat, wouldn't nickle and dime the consumer, and still be able to make great games. Sounds like the dream to me.

@EvenStephen7 I get where you're coming from but I think the "long game" ended when California filed their sexual harassment lawsuit against AB in 2021. It changed the gaming industry and opened up AB for an acquisition that wasn't on the table in 2020.

The same reason why Microsoft can drop almost $70 billion on AB is the reason they won't go for another big publisher for awhile. It's their diversified portfolio. Microsoft makes their money mainly through software and cloud storage. They aren't going to burn all their profits on one side division and completely ignore their main ones.

I just read a few posts here before I hurt my face with repetitive hits of my palm.

First off: anyone that is anyone and has the money would love to buy Nintendo. MS just happens to have the wallet to do it. If you think Sony would not love to buy Nintendo you are kidding yourselves. Same for the likes of Tencent or Amazon. Nintendo is extremely valuable in IP alone and not having any interest in such an acquisition, if it was on the table, would be absurd.

This letter shows only two real bits of info:

1. MS is ready to jump in and buy Nintendo if they ever mess up again and go the path of the Wii U, making them start to finally give up. Honestly this is an unlikely scenario, but if it was to happen, MS would be willing to buy them regardless their financial status.
2. MS is heavily against hostile acquisitions. No one should really be against willing mergers. Being against them is as much as being against all forms of capitalism, because these are the type of deals that drive all capitalist models. Being entirely against hostile takeovers is the one thing I want to keep seeing in any internal documentation from MS because it’s the one thing I hate. I’ll be worried the day I hear MS is contemplating a hostile takeover of any company, as small as such a company might be.

I'm really glad they didn't merge. I hate this direction that games companies (and all big companies) HAVE to merge to collaborate.

Why would Microsoft need to by Nintendo for Mario Kart to come to Xbox, or Activision for Call of Duty on Game Pass? You can come to a mutual agreement without buying each other out.

@PsBoxSwitchOwner Gotta have ambition to make it to that position.

I'm kinda amazed how some of you may think this invalidates his passion as a "gamer" though... I mean yeah, of course he would want to essentially "win" the console war. But no one should act like Sony wouldn't wanna do the same. You may find it scummy with good reason and that's fine but, I'm pretty sure he does actually like gaming.

The only possible.positive thing that might have come out of this is Scarlet and Violet not releasing as streaming piles.

They've still not patches the save corruption glitch that was found like a month after release. They were happy to releasing DLC though.

@Tharsman My take from that letter was that they are very much in favour of hostile takeovers, just not on this occasion. If it's not something your business would do as a general practice you wouldn't even mention it.

@Jimboss seems fun though, will see, the email is old and isn't that shocking at all, massive over reaction from many. Xbox and Nintendo already work together, they could increase that partnership I hope!

@Kevw2006 I don't read it that way, but mostly because I’m combining it with their track record. MS, as far as I can tell, has never attempted a hostile takeover in its whole history.

@RedShirtRod Agreed with all of that; the A/B deal was definitely the last major "get" they know they can pull off for a while.

I don't this makes him a monster, but I think some people get so upset and shocked when they don't get the PR-filtered version of Phil Spencer and realize he's a corporate suit like the rest of them. Sure, he likes videogames. And that's cool! But his #1 priority is not being some laid-back gamer, it's to make his company as much money as possible and hit career aspirations. At any and all costs.

So people build up these visions of "Uncle Phil" and then are shocked and upset when they see he had buying a beloved company like Nintendo as a "career moment" and "endgame" for Microsoft. CEOs don't get to where they are without being cutthroat and focused on growth.

@Tharsman They famously attempted a hostile takeover of Yahoo in 2008. Also I guess it depends on the exact definition of “hostile” but in the 90s and 00s they snapped up anyone they could find that posed a threat to Windows or Internet Explorer. They have form.

yeah the console space is better with all 3 players in it i think

Waiting for Defining Dukes to somehow spin this as not monopoly behavior and a good thing

@GeeEssEff A hostile takeover is when a company goes out and attempts to buy every single publicly traded stock directly from shareholders and against the wishes of the board/leadership of that company, or bypassing them entirely. It’s not really a thing that has personal definitions.

The 2008 yahoo “takeover” attempt was a direct negotiation with their board and was rejected, attempted to re-negotiate and eventually didn’t go anywhere.

Edit: This wiki does a good job at documenting every acquisition MS has ever gone through. it isn’t as large as many like to insist, for a company as large as MS. Most acquisitions, especially on the 80s and 90s, were relatively small. What MS was infamous for back then was not acquisitions, but producing vaporeare tech demos of technologies other companies were basing their entire startups around, killing their chances at an IPO and success. This was something Bill Gates personally was… disliked, for pursuing and the practice, as far as I recall, ended at some point when it became either beyond his personal focus or when he started to phase away as CEO.

@EvenStephen7 Oh I completely agree about Spencer. His promotion in Xbox was based solely on the Ballmer and Mattrick years at Microsoft. They wanted to push a narrative away from the business suits on the 2000s to more modern software of Nadella and Spencer. It's why you'll almost never see these two in the conventional business attire at events. They know their audience. These guys might be more in touch with what their consumers want but they are still there to make Microsoft profitable.

Absolutely disgusting. A wildly arrogant reflection on a company that is totally tone deaf of Nintendo's culture, but wealthy enough to simply buy success.

Hurry up Switch 2, you can't come soon enough. With Phil Spencer wanting to own the industry and turn it into a sterile PC for babies environment and Jim Ryan steering Sony the opposite direction to what I see as gaming, I hope AAA eats itself, whilst fighting over everything.

@EvenStephen7 maybe that’s why I’m not really shocked nor upset. Not to mention this is just a thought and you can think anything. It would be weird for a company in this business but to contemplate acquiring Nintendo. It’s the brass ring. Whether you act on it or not is a different story. But so is good business. At the end of the day it’s business :/

@GrailUK you do realize this was three years ago? Like long before ABK and even before Bethesda was finalized.

@RedShirtRod 100% agreed. So much of it is the personal branding of executives themselves. "Business casual."

If Microsoft acquired Nintendo and it went the same way as the Activision Blizzard acquisition — agreements being made for major franchises like Mario, Zelda, and Metroid to be released on PC and PlayStation over the next 10 years, in addition to Xbox — I think that would ultimately benefit consumers.

It seems like people are missing the full context of the email chain. It is basically a Microsoft employee outside of xbox saying, "Hey Phil Tiktok might be forced to sell to us, we never would have expected to be in this situation. Are there any gaming equivalents to this hypothetical where we would love to acquire someone if a crazy scenario presented itself? And Phil responds with a long-winded version of "Nintendo or Steam would be the big ones to get if they were ever in a position to sell."

@mousieone Aww bless you
(He did explicitly say they are playing the long game - something I have been saying for years...)

Xbox is insane if they think any regulatory body would allow the purchase of Nintendo or Valve.

@Garamari Didn't the FTC argue that PC and Nintendo were not in the same market as Xbox? (I bring that up as a joke, I do think they would have some serious legal hurdles. On the America side, it is pretty easy to imagine a Republican led FTC not caring one bit if an American company purchases a Japanese one.)

God this would be terrible and it would kill Nintendo. Thankfully Nintendo would never sell and Japan would never allow it. Yeah this is why Phil isn't the nice guy his PR side portrays.

This would be horrendous. The last thing this industry needs in Microsoft, Sony or other giant corporation owning Nintendo.

@PixelDragon The email is newly 4 years old. Spencer getting over excited but the ‘long game’ comment may not sit well with Nintendo. Ultimately I don’t see the leaks as being bombshells - most of it is hardly a surprise but tomorrow the PR machine at Xbox will be in overdrive

I mean Nintendo is expanding to movies/theme parks, Pokemon already is the biggest IP out there in merch/anime besides the games. Mario push as well. Others. Pikmin got more popular so that's cool 4 is 'fine' I hate the controls/core mechanics changes but sure.

Obviously its a hypothetical of companies in certain situations of selling and need support financially or 'can be bought for the talent/IPs' or whatever.

Otherwise with Valve, for a storefront to own sure, for the Steam Deck and more yeah nah. Even the Linux push would be cut off possibly by Microsoft so that could be good or bad if they let it continue or cut it off or want to get into Linux more than they already have in certain sides.

If it 'did' happen why not others. Sega did great stuff back in the day. Their IPs are what they are but they do VR, they did GBA/GameCube stuff, they did PS2/PSP stuff, Wii and more. A lot of really cool things.

Honestly any companies could be bought but the 'management', the 'marketing' and the 'handling of IPs, company management and console/controller features' is the issue here.

(especially marketing and games being much different then we think of scale or how we want games to be Starfield/Ratchet Rift Apart/Forza Motorsport 8 marketing vs how the game turn out, fair elements, some parts not as compelling or what we can 'think' they are).

Besides the ethics/financial side. They can have the money but if the soul, the treatment is bad why bother.

Tango is a sign for interesting Xbox Japanese development for sure and we will see how they go and Hi-Fi Rush was great but if we just see a lot of awkward projects that's on the teams and the sales/personality/execution/competition out there compared to other games on the market, player numbers and so on.

Nintendo being bought would just make it worse. What about the 'Japan innovates' Phil, we don't see OG/360 projects anymore it's not viable, we don't see it for family friendly games that much do we, nothing out of the ordinary at least.

Sure I know deals are what they are for any games but I mean if we see the same on both platforms it's not the more amazing of wow you have Paw Patrol on Xbox who cares.

Indiana Jones who knows either where it goes for a big movie IP game.

Versus other games we go oh Lucky's Tale (exclusive for a time, or not relevance) it's the more out there titles then licensed kids shows that makes you go oh ok this platformer is exclusive/funded by or whatever situation (kids and adults that love cartoony games and well designed platforming level design/mechanics and whatever obstacle course or quest based game design goals they have.

Say a Spyro 1 to a Banjo/Spyro 2 quest design approach for example) this visual novel (teen/adult audience more so) or other genres or audience that will experience them that makes us go oh ok never expected that on Xbox. Whether how we see the console/brand or just because of what is usually available on there anyway then other platforms.

Where is Pitfall huh, were is the Tad or Uncharted/Tomb Raider on a more cartoony or more adult angle maybe both? Where is it. I don't see anything happening there any time soon. It's open for potential, Activision doesn't care about the IP.

Yeah buying Nintendo means less innovation in hardware, I don't care about better graphics I care about gameplay/hardware that focuses on gameplay.

The Xbox controller we saw sure motion controls, woo, but we already got them since the Gameboy Color (Kirby Tilt and Tumble)/Wii/PS3 or the Hotseat/Power Glove on NES, couldn't care less about it in the Xbox controller other than 'wow, finally' they caught up.

Sure HD Rumble (2017 and 2020 Dualsense use with Haptic Triggers and Vibration improvements and so on there) or Impulse Triggers (2013, certain use cases of shooter/racing were good).

Even then 'oh family friend IPs' uh news flash you tried in the OG/360 days if you can't get them to work why bother.

Let alone if your 'audience' doesn't care. Many may, that's why they buy those types of games, or those kinds of consoles as a second/third consoles or first console but it depends. I bought Demon Turf because it was physical on Xbox One/Series only.

Otherwise I'd have bought it on any platform digitally instead. I don't have many reasons to buy a platformer on Xbox at all.

I can get Lucky's Tale anywhere I just happened to get the Xbox One version then the more refined Switch/PS4 version of the game or the older VR Occulus version of the game.

Buying up to control it doesn't help. Building up takes time but if the products suck and get worse because those teams, the marketing is bad and scummy then why should customers want them. Besides those that take a stand anyway but are they wrong if they know the products will get worse I don't blame them.

Japanese companies are not allowed to be bought/sold to foreign companies.
Microsoft would never be allowed to purchase Nintendo!