The first company to be approached was EA – which, due to its dominance in the industry at the time, apparently called the team members the Snow White to the rest of the Seven Dwarfs industry. The then head of business development, Bob McBreen, says the answer was “No, thank you”, before Microsoft turned to Nintendo.“Steve let us meet Nintendo to see if they would consider purchasing,” explains third-party director Kevin Bachus. They just laughed at the asses. Imagine for a second you were transposed into the karmic driven world of Earl. That was kind of how the meeting went. ‘
The teams appear to have met more than once, and McBreen added: ‘We had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work through the details of a joint venture where we gave them all the technical specifications of the Xbox. gave. The pitch was their hardware. stunk, and compared to Sony PlayStation did. The idea was: ‘Listen, you’re much better in the game parts of it with Mario and all that stuff. Why not allow us to take care of the hardware? “But it did not work out. ‘
McBreen also discusses that a potential takeover of Square goes so far beyond Microsoft’s letter of intent to buy the company. “The next day,” he continued, “we were sitting in their boardroom and they said, ‘Our banker would like to make a statement.’ And basically, the banker said, ‘Square can’t go through this transaction because the price is too low.’ We packed up, went home, and that was the end of Square. ‘Finally, Bachus explains that the fatal Midway Games – best known for publishing the Mortal Kombat series – were ‘very serious’ with the acquisition of Microsoft, but it has become a low value for the company.
During this time, Microsoft was also forced to receive a call from Bungie and inquire about an acquisition – and out of the call comes Halo, almost arguably the most iconic Xbox franchise, helping to confirm what Xbox would become as a result. .
The acquisitions are just one part of a fascinating piece about Xbox’s early history. I recommend that you read this if you enjoyed the above. And if you liked hearing about Xbox history in general, we also unlocked IGN’s own Podcast featuring Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, former Xbox CEO Peter Moore, and Xbox creator Seamus Blackley.
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s editor – in – chief of News. Follow him further Twitter. Do you have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].