Nintendo Boss Showers Praise On 'Great Relationship' With Xbox & Microsoft

I wouldn’t be surprised if one day on even Switch or probably Switch 2 we saw game pass, cloud based.
It definitely wouldn’t harm Nintendo’s own AAA titles and imagine a Nintendo console with the game pass library.
I would prefer full download game though and would only have game pass on a Nintendo console if I could fully download.

Let’s be honest, It’s good to have a partnership like this when Sony make some of the decisions they’ve made and act the way they do.

I don't like the idea of Microsoft acquiring Nintendo, but I do love this partnership, my Switch Oled and Xbox Series S complement each other perfectly ❤️

Cant wait for Mario and zelda on game pass......😂😂

Would love to see Halo Collection on Switch one day.

@Bl4ckb100d that would never happen......ever

@Savage_Joe
Yes I did hear about that some time ago.
But there is also another chance or deal that works out for both maybe sometime in the future.

I will never not chuckle to myself when I see the name ‘Doug Bowser’ being associated with Nintendo

@GeeEssEff lol

@Bl4ckb100d nobody likes the idea of that Microsoft would ruin nintendo like they did with rare Microsoft dont have any idea how handle most studios nintendo are an amazing game developer best in the world for me. being in good books with them is great and good for the future maybe gamepass on a nintendo console who knows?

Ayo in what other way could they be a partner 🧐

I'm sure at some point GP will be on the Switch or the next Nintendo console. I said it before, Sony is going to be the odd man out. Console sales do not matter anymore. And Nintendo and Microsoft have this relationship that doesn't include Sony. This is why Microsoft is the leader, not Sony. I have and love both consoles but Microsoft is planning for the future, while Sony is banking on the past.

Nintendo blocked the xbla version of goldeneye. That’s not exactly a great partnership.

I hope Xbox after buying activision rereleases goldeneye reloaded with Xbox one x enhancements.

Keep publishing games on switch please MS. I have an xbox but prefer to buy on my preferred console.

@Kaloudz exposure/good will just like any other publisher. Sole Nintendo owners are a pretty untapped market for a lot of genres since the game cube days (Nintendo preferred multi system owners are smaller but we exist as well.). MS can look like a white knight with not as much investment (especially since they have likely acquired studios with switch porting experience) and get the brand into more homes. And for the Japanese market they need all the help they can get.

Plus honestly I feel like MS can leverage their partnership later to push Azure to Nintendo for servers. And that would be far more important to microsoft than games. Nintendo is an entertainment company first and foremost and so long as they don’t have to give up their internal dev process they don’t mind pulling in 3rd parties for stuff that isn’t in their wheelhouse. Microsoft is a software/tech/saas company first and foremost so they don’t care about console wars (beyond lost revenue) or getting games from Nintendo (which won’t happen) so much as getting their products into more homes and businesses. One way or the other. (Which imo is why the CMA was up in arms about cloud gaming because it was less about gaming and more about MS getting an infrastructure advantage that a non tech company can’t match). Will be many years down the line though.

For it to be a partnership both sides must be getting something out of it, when does Xbox benefit? I'm guessing it would be out of the question to ask for Rare developed Donkey Kong 64 and Diddy Kong Racing? 🧐

Like most people, I'm still wondering when are we going to see something on Xbox. Diddy Kong Racing on both platforms would be great but so far we are only seeing Microsoft games on Switch.

@GeeEssEff Bowser finally won!

@GeeEssEff When I read Bowser's statements, I hear them in a gruff Scott Burns (Bowser from Super Mario Sunshine) voice.

@Dan1283 With Rare... I believe there's a lot more to the story, but yeah, they clearly felt some pressure (external or self-imposed) to make changes to better conform to the Xbox dudebro image at the time. And then their output dropped from 2-3 games every year to what, 1 game every 8 years?

Do you think there's any company out there that could manage some of the business and hardware sides of Nintendo better than Nintendo themselves, though? Nintendo's obviously doing really well, regardless, but many of us are frustrated to see their quality exclusives shackled to weak hardware that can't do them justice. Or banished to the Nintendo Vault for decades at a time. I'm not sure Microsoft is the one for the job, but there must be someone.

@Juanalf Yeah, it seems a little odd to call it a partnership.
"We have a great partnership with Microsoft: they let us have their games, and we... uh, have a great partnership with them in return."

In all seriousness, though, MS does benefit by selling way more copies of Cuphead, Ori, etc., than they would by locking them to Xbox only. And I don't know how much Nintendo gave them for Banjo-Kazooie in Smash, but it's basically free money for MS.

And I'd hope that in return, Nintendo would be willing to at least loosen up on their Rare-developed games (especially the ones that MS partially owns), but I'm not holding my breath!

@smoreon Right. I was completely satisfied with Nintendo until GameCube. Every generation since then, it's weak hardware. This generation has the weakest hardware relatively and the worst controllers ever. I would love Nintendo to be just a publisher so I wouldn't need to buy rubbish hardware and the same games over and over. I bought a Brook accessory just to use my Xbox controller but the frame rate and low resolutions remain. I might sound harsh but it's because I can't believe how fans and reviewers criticise performance on Xbox and PS and forgive anything on Nintendo,.even when it's a remixed Wii U sequel like Tears of the Kingdom.

Your questions are interesting. Just compare backwards compatibility and Rare Replay with Nintendo charging the same user accounts (NNIDs were merged with Nintendo accounts) several times for the same 30-year old games and then a subscription to play them again on Switch.

EDIT: Diddy Kong Racing was developed and published by Rare, it only has one character owned by Nintendo, that was also created by Rare, and the game is still stuck on Nintendo 64 (and DS). Imagine Microsoft banning Donkey Kong 64 on Nintendo platforms because it includes Jetpac.

I really love many Nintendo games but Nintendo as a company is really awful, so I would prefer to just buy the games and play them on Series X.

If you consider them partners, release Xenoblade on PC or xbox lol. I've already played it, but it would be better to play it with higher quality. It looked blurry on the switch.

"We at Nintendo have a fantastic partnership with Microsoft! They give us their games and we take them with a big smile!? honestly is one of the best and most rewarding partnerships we've seen in gaming 😄✌️"

Xbox cloud streaming to switch would be lovely.

But I sincerely hope Microsoft never acquire nintendo.

They could throw one back to xbox lol. Give them a pikmin or something.

I honestly think nintendo would benefit to make some of their games multiplat, especially some of the wii u ports that aren't system sellers anymore.

@OldGamer999 that would be really awesome

@Banjo- I just looked in the manual for DKR DS, and it says:
"Copyrights of Game, Scenario, Music and Program, reserved by Nintendo. Copyrights of certain Characters reserved by Rare."

Pretty clear-cut. But the original N64 version said:
"©1997 Rare.
[Diddy Kong is a] trademark of Nintendo.
Diddy Kong, Banjo, and Krunch characters licensed by Nintendo."

So did some IP change hands around the acquisition by Microsoft? Obviously, the copyright info from 10 years later is more likely to be accurate, but it's interesting.

PS: On a related topic, I also noticed recently that Sega owns the code for F-Zero GX, with the soundtrack being owned and licensed by Daiki Kasho, and many other elements apparently being jointly owned with Nintendo.
Not like we're going to find full-fledged legal ownership documents in our instruction manuals, but there seems to be a lot of interesting info right under our noses!

I think that partership seem as a very strong word in this context…

I'd say they are in a form of partnership. Nintendo was Xbox's first and biggest supporters during the Activision deal. I think had Nintendo not came out and supported from the early stages it might not have made it.

@Spatan555 don't thinks so unless Nintendo wants to share something from there library.

@smoreon to be fair in rares defense , all studios are taking longer now to make games. State of decay , forza, halo , gears, naughty dog games, and so on are taking an extra couple of years now in comparison to the 360 and ps3 days when you can see a halo every other year or 3 main gears games and one prequel. But still I only defend them to a point. It's been 5 years since they announced everwild. In the the time sea of thieves was announced and released it was just a bit over 3 years of wait time.

@smoreon The judge said that the DK characters would be owned by Nintendo, so maybe that's why the copyright of the Nintendo DS game changed, although it's surprising because all characters but Diddy are owned by Rare. Could the N64 game belong to Rare and the DS game to Nintendo? Interesting that a single character created by Rare but owned by Nintendo would change things so much, but if Nintendo agreed, we would have seen Diddy Kong Racing again. After getting Banjo-Kazooie on Nintendo Online, they should have made the racing game for both platforms possible, but it's like they prefer something to disappear before sharing it, even when it's not part of their universe like Goldeneye 007.

Sega and Nintendo should agree easily about F-Zero GX because Sega doesn't make consoles. The copyright of the soundtrack could be a problem because of what you wrote, but they can always change it, right?

@Moonglow It would be great. Considering that Switch's successor is not guaranteed to share the same level of success and that Nintendo is not pursuing a technological battle, it makes a lot of sense for Nintendo to publish something on Xbox and not just on Google Play and Apple iOS.

@Kaloudz what else would they be interested in besides money ?

@y2jarmyofficial Yeah, and Rare already took 2-3 years to make each game, even back in the N64 days. But they used to have several studios working on different projects at the same time, which allowed for the rapid-fire release schedule. Apparently, they stopped doing that at some point? (Unless one studio is stuck doing Sea of Thieves content for a full decade, and another studio is locked in the basement at Microsoft HQ, doomed to work on avatars, Kinect, TVTVTV, or whatever else no one wants to do!)

@Banjo- Common knowledge has been that Nintendo owns the Donkey Kong characters (including the Rare-designed Diddy and Krunch), whereas Rare (and by extension, Microsoft) owns Banjo and most of the actual content of the games themselves. But the reality would seem to be more complex than that.

It's safe to say that Rare got to keep Banjo in the end, despite what the 1997 manual says. (He's in several Xbox-exclusive games, for instance!) That lines up with his removal from DKR DS. But then, if Rare still owns certain characters in DKR DS, then it's interesting that they got to stay in, even though Banjo and Conker had to go. A trademark issue, perhaps?

Considering all this, I can't even imagine how convoluted the rights must be for Dinosaur Planet!

@smoreon Tiptup appears in Banjo-Kazooie so I would assume that it belongs to Rare. Not all the characters that appear in Diddy Kong Racing DS belong to Nintendo. According to this website, Pipsy also belongs to Rare. What I remember is that the DK characters were given to Nintendo because Nintendo created the original DK, but of course I would love to know all the updated legal information. Apparently, all characters created by Rare belong to Rare, except those that are part of the DK family.

She was created by Rare Ltd., and due to the Microsoft buy out of the company, the rights to her character are now owned by Microsoft.

https://www.mariowiki.com/Pipsy

Dinosaur Planet turned into Star Fox Adventures because Nintendo asked for it and that game belongs to Nintendo now. Funnily, if it wasn't a Star Fox game as planned by the developer, it would belong to Rare.

EDIT:

So it is as I remember, the DK characters are the only that Nintendo kept. I forgot about Krunch in my previous comment.

Krunch was the only Diddy Kong Racing cast member, besides Diddy Kong, whose rights were kept with Nintendo.

https://www.mariowiki.com/Krunch

The part that really confuses me is Diddy Kong Racing DS stating that the copyright belongs to Nintendo when the original game's copyright belongs to Rare.

@y2jarmyofficial @smoreon I remember also that Rare helped other studios during the last generation with Kinect, Killer Instinct, Battletoads and with sea code, but it doesn't really explain why they are stuck on Sea of Thieves or why Everwild seems to be in development hell. The Coalition recently helped other studios with code optimisation, just like Id Software helped Bethesda with Starfield, so those have been busier than usual.

So yes, games take a longer development time since the last generation because it's not just them but everyone else, but some of them are getting a bit lazy or messy. For starters, The Initiative, that has Crystal Dynamics re-rebooting Perfect Dark; 343 Industries, that needed external assistance to finish Halo Infinite; Rare, that never had serious issues with development until now...

Because Banjo-Kazooie's director and designer Gregg Mayles still works at Rare, I can still dream of a new Banjo-Kazooie game. Maybe Activision can help with development or perhaps Playtonic doesn't mind coming back to Microsoft. Rare's new boss said years ago that he didn't care about old games but he recently talked positively about Rare's legacy. What I'm missing on Xbox is Banjo-Kazooie, Viva Piñata, Conker... That kind of games.

@Banjo- Right, Tiptup is why I suspect trademarks: he's effectively an Xbox character now, yet he can stay in- but I strongly doubt that this minor character's name has been trademarked. (Or, I suppose the more subjective issues of importance and prevalence could have been the deciding factor.)

Has it been confirmed that Nintendo owns DP/SFA? I thought it was speculation. If true, though, it could be simply that Nintendo got to keep all scenarios and code from games that their characters appeared in (i.e., anything Donkey Kong or Star Fox). That would explain how they got DKR.

But even if they do own SFA (and Krystal, and apparently Tricky), it seems less likely that they own, say, the unused content that stayed on the N64. Or any other characters used and unused alike: Scales, Drakor, Randorn, Shabunga, and so on.

@smoreon I think that it's like that, Nintendo received the games that include characters that they own, the DK family and Star Fox, but it doesn't explain why they got the copyright on Diddy Kong Racing, because it also includes Banjo, Conker...

Yes, Rare could finish and release Dinosaur Planet and wouldn't it be super cool? 😁

@Banjo- Guess Nintendo got to keep any games that included their characters, even if there were also Rare-owned characters involved. Again, speculation, of course.

As great as it would be, I highly doubt that Rare could just go ahead and release Dinosaur Planet on Xbox without Nintendo's permission. We already know that Nintendo got to keep Krystal and Tricky, and has used them in later games.
Plus, if our theory is true, and Nintendo got to keep all of SFA minus most characters, then that means they own a large chunk of the code, scenarios, and music from DP, making it impossible to release without again cutting out half the content- just that it'd be the half that didn't get cut in the move to the GameCube, making it like a negative image of SFA!

@smoreon The problem is that Nintendo hates their own fans and would go bankrupt before sharing something with anyone, but I hope that they and Microsoft agree to remake Diddy Kong Racing for both platforms some day. Or perhaps Rare should create a new racing game?

Rare could reboot Dinosaur Planet. They have so many incredible IPs and discarded ideas. I played Jet Force Gemini on Rare Replay (modern controls) and I loved it. Once I got used to how to aim which is different than in newer shooters, I had a really good time. Before that, I was killed at the first village and thought that the controls were impossible to master. Viva Piñata, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, Jet Force Gemini, Goldeneye 007... Something about them is so addictive and fun and they made so many memorable games, more and better than anyone else, that still can be appreciated after adjusting a little bit. Also, isn't Conker's Bad Fur Day the best-looking N64 game? And what about Star Fox Adventures on GameCube or the DKC games on SNES? Incredible graphics, awesome music and a combination of fun, addictive gameplay and difficulty.

@Banjo- It really is a shame that they've done so little with their IPs for all these years (and the few games they have made are just not to my tastes).

And they did so many great games back in the day, like you said! I feel like a few of them are carried more by their graphics and/or personality than the gameplay itself (Conker, SFA, Kameo), but the gameplay in most of the games you mentioned is really good, and sometimes doesn't get the credit it deserves. Things like how DKC is fine-tuned to facilitate fast, smooth gameplay. Or how DKR has accessible controls, yet a high skill ceiling, with its ludicrously fast boosts and drifts. Or how GE and PD's flexible level design allows for smart, creative approaches to the challenges. The presentation is consistently great in these, but there's a great core there, as well!

Jet Force is great, too. The controls are admittedly a little weird on the N64, but I thought they're basically just like Call of Duty on Xbox (in the modern scheme, that is), so I'm curious as to where you ran into issues.

Anything's possible. Miyamoto isn't getting any younger and Nintendos outsourcing their games. Miyamoto hasn't exactly been openly mentoring anyone at Nintendo to take his mantle since. So, anything is possible.

However, when you look at Xbox's track record, they havent been the same since the Xbox 360 era which only gave them a minor boost because Sony got a little overly confident, but in the end prevailed. Where Microsoft had acquired Rare, which essentially came from SEGAs failed partnership with Silicon Graphics who then referred them to Nintendo, Rare after they were acquired by Microsoft went down hill really quick. Long time Nintendo fans could really sense and tell a distinct loss of spirit, Rare was dead. It's content creators left and moved onto their own splinter groups, but just like a splinter Evangelical church, the message just isn't the same anymore, it's more and more diluted. Xbox, especially as of recent, hasn't really shown that quality. They never really ever had it. They've been amateurs in the business practically since the beginning. They want to come off as gamers, but they really aren't, their Suits and the culture shows that way in their games and the shakey nature of the studios, Rod Ferguson returning to Xbox for the third time with Blizzards acquisition. He was the head of a studio, THE STUDIO HEAD once Black Tusk but becoming The Coalition, and as a studio head and a Microsoft paycheck and pension, it still couldn't keep him around and he left.

IF Nintendo were to be acquired by Xbox, Nintendos identity and legacy would die, and Rare of proof of what you would see

@smoreon I agree. The DKC games are a joy to play. They are as timeless as Super Mario World. I know that people always mention Retro's entries for Wii and Wii U, but they are not at their level.

The thing with Jet Force Gemini, at least for me, is that it took a while to get used to it, but then I loved the game. It deserves a sequel. I don't know how to explain it, it's that walking and aiming it's not 50/50 but you need to aim more subtly compared to modern shooters, and draw lines anticipating the movement of the enemies, but even that weirdness that must be consequence of being designed for N64, was ultimately more fun and rewarding than just moving the crosshair like if using a mouse. It feels heavier and more realistic, but it probably only works when the game is designed for it.

@Kaloudz 🤣🤣 I'm all for some IP revisits lol