In the latest unredacted document oopsie stemming from the US Federal Trade Commission’s efforts to stop Microsoft acqu…
Bring back anti-trust regulations. Microsoft has been trying to acquire anything they can get their hands on, and really should be dismantled on principle.
Yes, indeed. This is so obvious and my frustration is immeasurable when hearing that people are too ignorant to understand why this is really bad.
No it’s good! It’ll give them twice the power to make games and it’ll be better! They totally won’t just sit there with their monopoly, monopolies are good! Plus we still have Sony. Wait they want to buy Sony too? Even better!
Yayay, all my games on Microsoft©️ GamePass™️, wait what do you mean they increased the prices? I’m sure one of the competitors…oh
I was watching this video this morning, and he points out how these leaks show a pattern of Microsoft basically wanting to buy up all of gaming (I also liked how he called Microsoft’s whole way of think about buying Nintendo as a bit of American imperialism). Folks like their Game Pass and don’t like Nintendo not giving a damn about trends or multiplayer or whatever and just going along doing their own thing, and think it would be a great idea for Microsoft to own them, and…no. Just, no.
This was before ABK, in fact around Zenimax acquisition time. After the excruciating process of ABK’s acquisition which also brought us highly costly leak, I think they won’t dare to buy a big player for now and no regulator would let that happen given it would be a horizontal acquisition if I understand that correctly.
The recent actiblizz situation has shown that Microsoft can do whatever they want, and no regulator will stop them. No regulator currently has teeth or a want to stop any aspect of big business, especially not tech. Thinking a regulator will say no to anything at this point is wishful at beat.
I mean it’s still stuck and CMA may still block it for all we know. Regulators definitely made them go through hoops for this one and it there’s a next one it’ll probably not go well after this.
So I would like to be on board with this. But if you look at every single regulator who even double taked, it was all about cloud. They don’t care about consolidation of media and they have no intention of stopping it.
I think they cared about it, saw the numbers, and realised the case can’t be made because of the current way market is setup. CMA initially wasn’t convinced but with correct calculations it got resolved. FTC actually didn’t make a big point over cloud but that this could destroy PlayStation, which also wasn’t justifiable with data. EU held similar opinions but felt it also is pro competitive given the number of IPs Sony holds.
But after ABK, I don’t think that case can be made anymore. With ABK the number of IPs and content becomes more competitive with PS and Nintendo, and they all kept saying this is a vertical merger, Nintendo or Sony wouldn’t, and thus wouldn’t be allowed.
if Microsoft buys Nintendo, Nintendo dies
So, support from Microsoft on Smash tournaments?
Only on Microsoft sanctioned tournaments. Which I highly doubt that would happen.
They’re doing a fine job killing themselves already.
Edit: why are you booing me? I’m right.
Microsoft needs to fuck off.
im getting really tired of all of these MS acquisitions. I know the nintendo one is very unlikely, but i would be pissed as fuck to see valve swallowed up by this terrifying beast.
It would never happen as long as Gabe is still at the helm.
For sure. I hope he’s found a good successor that will keep Valve’s core values alive for years to come.
Valve isn’t any more likely than Nintendo, given you can’t buy shares because there are none, and it’s a money printing machine that would have a truly absurd value.
I’d like to think the Japanese government wouldn’t approve that.
Neither should the EU
Neither should the US, Australia or any other country that Nintendo or Microsoft trade in.
MS wanted to buy Nintendo. The company that has so much money on hand that they are a noticable thing to the japanese banking sector?
Of all possible companies they were looking at buying? Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!
And of all the hubris to want to rock up to a company that is over 125 years old and still going strong to tell them you would know better how to run their company than them.
Market cap of Nintendo - 50 billion Market cap of Microsoft - 2.4 trillion
It’s really hard for humans to imagine things at that scale, but Microsoft is so many orders of magnitude larger than Nintendo that whatever Microsoft (and other mega tech companies like Apple and Google) does the entire global international finance system feels it.
What’s your point? Microsoft is easily several times bigger and is a “noticeable thing” in pretty much every country.
Sony is worth more than twice as much as Nintendo.
Heck, Sony might be more realistic by comparison, at least their gaming/console parts!
I mean, judging from the quotes, even MS considered it pretty unlikely back when the email is sent.
Didn’t they want to do this 2 decades ago also? The offer was laughed at.
Looks like the lads took it personally.
They misspelled Dwayne Johnson. Hah
Duane Johnson
The email describes a hostile takeover: buy enough stock to own the board then pressure the company to sell.
Microsoft will buy my teapottery if anti-trust regulations don’t keep them in check. And, in today’s climate, I don’t believe for a moment that anybody will make a reasonable attempt to do so.
Xbox games are on PC. Playstation games are on PC. Nintendo is Nintendo. If Microsoft ever bought out Nintendo, Nintendo would disappear, effectively making consoles obsolete. People will still buy consoles, but they would be pissing away their money.
There will always be a market for consoles. If you buy a game, know for a fact that it works. If you have a PC, it can start to be obsolete, or your graphics card might not be supported, or your OS might not be patched, or…
There will also always be a market for PCs, because you can do things cheaper, and/or better than consoles.
What the fuck, this will actually kill Nintendo. Aren’t they way too big to buy?
Microsoft is bigger.
Nintendo’s market cap is about $56.7 billion.
Microsoft’s market cap is $2.44 trillion, with $111 billion worth of cash (not equity, cash) in the bank.
Microsoft is 43 times bigger than Nintendo. They can pay for Nintendo with only cash, if they desire.
These trillion-dollar players are an order of magnitude larger than anyone around them. They can do what they want, same as how Apple ($2.8 trillion) can easily buy Disney ($150.5 billion) if they wished.
This isn’t an exact science, but you can use market cap to ballpark these things and get an idea of how much an acquisition would cost. For example, Twitter had a market cap of $31 billion in August 2022, and Elon bought it a few months later for $44 billion. That’s a 1.4x increase, so applying the same math buying all of Disney would “only” cost about $214 billion - which both Apple and Microsoft (and Google) could do. Nintendo would cost about $80 billion, which Microsoft could do without even taking out a loan.
The issue isn’t necessarily the price; it’s the regulators.
What is Microsoft even making money on these days?
googles
https://www.kamilfranek.com/microsoft-revenue-breakdown/
Azure, Office, and (still) Windows, apparently.
Only 8% of revenue is gaming. They sure do went to grow that.
Yeah, also they probably have no interest in being bought. I wouldn’t worry about what a greedy MS corpo wants in this regard
Turned out well for Rareware…
If Nintendo diversified its titles onto other platforms then they wouldn’t be in a position for an offer to come from Microsoft.
Can you imagine how popular key Nintendo titles would be on PC or under a game pass deal.
This was in 2020 they were thinking this, and it doesn’t seem like Nintendo was interested at all.
Microsoft offered to buy them back in 2000 or something, and got laughed at. Nintendo is not looking to be bought out. Nintendo does things its way and stays in its lane.
I honestly don’t have the faintest belief that Nintendo would ever take the deal. Sure they don’t diversify their platforms, but they also have the best cut from their platform.
None of that matters. They won’t ever sell because of pride. Their culture goes against it on every level. It won’t happen.
The only company I’d trust to buy Nintendo is Apple. But I’d rather that not happen
FUCK NO
Do you mind expanding on why you are opposed to it? To me, the companies have very similar values, especially the “we know what the consumer wants better than the consumer does” attitude and similar values toward being a walled garden with crafted experiences rather than openness.
I know that those things aren’t popular with those who hate apple because of its philosophies and those who think it’s morally correct to pirate Nintendo games; but from a purely business standpoint, Apple would be a much better steward of Nintendo’s IP
My primary concern is that Apple has a bad habit of taking anything that they buy and only making it available within the apple ecosystem. I’m not in the Apple ecosystem and do not wish to be. There are, of course, notable exceptions to this. Apple music comes to mind.
A very valid concern. Thank you.
The other concern I would have is that Apple hasn’t really dealt with physical media since like the install disc for either lion or snow leopard (can’t remember the last one you could go to Best Buy and buy an install DVD) so I’d be concerned they’d abandon dedicated gaming hardware completely or even if they did have an AppleTV like console, they’d have no support for physical media.
They have the opposite mindset when it comes to how they handle hardware. Nintendo targets the cheapest demographic, willing to use old technology if it meant turning profit., Apple targets the complete oppisite by always buying out bleeding edge TSMC nodes. The only thing they share in common is both sell at profit on hardware sales.
I would prefer no one bought Nintendo and they kept on doing what they do. They’ve been around for over 125 and you can still buy the hanafuda playing cards they started out making, so I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing.
I absolutely agree with you, the gaming industry is much stronger with Nintendo’s presence. I was just stating that if Nintendo went up for sale, for whatever reason, I’d trust Apple to continue Nintendo’s design philosophy better than Microsoft, Sony, Google, or another big tech company.
Bought one many years ago, it’s unexpectedly pricey for a 5cm paper card (48 cards). IIRC it’s their excuse is “traditional look”. The box is nice though.
I can’t wait for yearly Nintendo console releases with merely cosmetic changes at $1500 price points and breaking OS changes that prevent you using games you bought two years prior!
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