JC Olivera/Getty Images
In addition to the new Xbox hardware in preparation, Microsoft and the FTCLitigation informationIt also lets everyone know what Xbox head Phil Spencer thinks about the acquisition of Nintendo. In an email sent to the company’s chief marketing officer Chris Capossela and Ken Numamoto in 2020, Spencer bluntly stated that if he could acquire Nintendo, it would be a “career-defining moment.” In his view, Nintendo will become Microsoft’s most valuable investment in the gaming field, and gaming is also the industry in which Microsoft has the greatest hope of becoming relevant to ordinary consumers. Spencer firmly believes that if there was an American company capable of acquiring Nintendo, it would be Microsoft. But it is clear that Lao Ren “is not short of money at all,” so the possibility of finding a buyer is slim.
In the letter, Spencer also pointed out that Nintendo has a board of directors that has not been demanding performance growth in the past many years. But he thinks this may change in the future, because ValueAct, one of Microsoft’s board members, has “actively bought” a lot of Lao Ren’s shares, and they have always been “very supportive” of the idea of mergers and acquisitions. At the end of the email, Spencer said that “it will take a long time for Nintendo to see that its future will depend on their hardware.” He then emphasized “a long time” again and added a smiley face, seeming to imply that he was willing to fight. A long battle.
Interestingly, in a long article by Bloomberg two years ago, the story of Microsoft’s secret acquisition of Nintendo was mentioned. This may have sounded like a fantasy at the time, but given Microsoft’s financial resources, it wasn’t entirely impossible. It’s just that this idea was a bit unusual, so Lao Ren just chose to laugh it off. “They (Nintendo) were absolutely laughing,” Kevin Bachus, who was in charge of third-party relations for the Xbox program at the time, told Bloomberg. “Just imagine that the other party was laughing at you for a whole hour. That’s pretty much what the meeting felt like. .”
