Reported by Eurogamer, Microsoft attempted to purchase Nintendo 20 years ago, which they kindly “just laughed their asses off.”
Former director of third party relations, Kevin Bachus, went onto say their meeting didn’t go so well.
“Steve [Ballmer, ex-Microsoft CEO] made us go meet with Nintendo to see if they would consider being acquired. They just laughed their asses off. Like, imagine an hour of somebody just laughing at you. That was kind of how that meeting went.”
It went even further in January 2000, when business development Bob McBreen, revealed Microsoft met with Nintendo Jan 2000 for a joint venture where Xbox would build the hardware for Nintendo games.
“We actually had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specs of the Xbox,” McBreen said.
“The pitch was their hardware stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation, it did. So the idea was, ‘Listen, you’re much better at the game portions of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why don’t you let us take care of the hardware?’ But it didn’t work out.”
