The first company approached was EA – which, due to its dominance in the industry at the time, team members apparently called Snow White to the rest of the industry’s Seven Dwarfs. The then head of business development Bob McBreen said the answer was “No thanks,” before Microsoft turned to Nintendo.“Steve made us find Nintendo to see if they would consider being acquired,” explains then director of relationship with third parties, Kevin Bachus. “They laughed a lot. Like, imagine an hour when someone laughed at you. That’s how the meeting went.”
It appears that the teams met more than once, with McBreen adding, “In fact, we had Nintendo in our building in January 2000 to work out the details of a joint venture where we provided them with all the Xbox technical specifications. The proposal was for the hardware to stink and, compared to the Sony PlayStation, it was. So the idea was: ‘Listen, you are much better at the game parts with Mario and all that stuff. Why don’t you let us take care of the hardware? ‘ But it did not work. “
McBreen also argues that a possible acquisition of Square has gone so far as to provide Microsoft with a letter of intent to buy the company. “The next day,” he continues, “we are sitting in the conference room and they said, ‘Our banker would like to make a statement.’ And basically, the banker said, ‘Square can’t go ahead with this deal because the price is too low.’ We packed up, went home and that was the end of Square.Finally, Bachus explains that the ill-fated Midway Games – most famous for publishing the Mortal Kombat series – was “very serious” about being acquired by Microsoft, but it became a low-value business for the company.
Fatally, this time Microsoft also received a call from Bungie, asking about an acquisition – and from that call came Halo, almost arguably the most iconic Xbox franchise, and helping to cement what the Xbox would become as a result.
Acquisitions are just part of a fascinating part of the early history of Xbox – I strongly recommend that you take a look if you like the above. And if you enjoyed hearing about Xbox history in general, we also have the IGN podcast unlocked with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, former Xbox boss Peter Moore and Xbox creator Seamus Blackley.
Joe Skrebels is the Executive News Editor at IGN. Follow him on Twitter. Do you have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].