On the occasion of the inauguration of the virtual museum in honor of the twentieth year that has passed since the release of the first model of Xbox, Microsoft has published the bizarre letter in which, now over 20 years ago, attempted to acquire Nintendo.
It was the year 1999, and while Nintendo was now putting the ideas into practice before the release of Dolphin, code name for the historic consul that took immediately after the name of Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft was instead trying to rebrand itself for what it would become the first Xbox.
There greater concern for the then CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer was the absence of proprietary IPs with which to accompany the launch of the console, and has decided to recover by sending a proposed acquisition from Microsoft itself to the offices of Nintendo of America.
In Ballmer’s commissioned letter to Microsoft’s vice president Rick Thompson there was talk of how, through the union between the two giants, the goal of make Dolphin the greatest console ever, and how Microsoft and Nintendo would thus be able to create a uniquely focused product on the playful video aspect.
The letter was followed a meeting between Thompson himself and the leaders of Nintendo, at the time represented by the president of Nintendo of Japan Hiroshi Yamauchi and Genyo Takeda, best known for having created the series Punch-Out !! and having collaborated in the realization of Nintendo Wii. During that meeting, by word of the same vice president of Microsoft, Yamauchi and Takeda did nothing but laugh at his proposal.
Steve Ballmer brought us together with Nintendo to understand their intentions regarding our takeover offer. They just laughed at us. Imagine someone laughing at you for a full hour. Here’s how that meeting went.
Microsoft has today managed to reach an agreement with Sega but, 22 years after that bizarre encounter, it’s hard to imagine what Nintendo would have been like today if it had accepted the proposed acquisition, especially given the radically different approaches that two companies followed.
However, it is fun to think of a Nintendo Switch Series X, a Xbox Switch or, as was actually in Nintendo’s plans according to a leak, a portable GameCube.
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