Xbox - gotta catch them all
Microsoft apparently tried to buy Nintendo
According to a new book that's just come out in the States called "Opening The Xbox", Microsoft put in a $25bn bid for Nintendo at the tail end of the last millennium. The gargantuan take-over offer was apparently met with laughter by the Japanese gaming behemoth, whose success with the Pokemon franchise and the ever popular GameBoy series of hand-held gaming systems has left it rolling in cash. "I was surprised, we didn't need the money", Nintendo Of America's Minoru Arakawa is quoted as saying. "I thought it was a joke." Joke or not, half-hearted negotiations apparently continued over the winter, before finally floundering in January 2000 after opposition from Nintendo's elderly president Hiroshi Yamauchi. "It became clear that our objectives and their objectives were not the same", Arakawa explained. If the book is to be believed, Microsoft's ultimate aim was to get Nintendo to drop their plans for the GameCube and throw their support behind the newly conceived Xbox instead. Certainly such a move would have provided a massive boost for the Xbox, particularly in the difficult Japanese market. It's a funny old world...