Should Nintendo invest in Namco?

[jarrod]

peachbuggy said:

jarrod said:
Nintendo should invest in Capcom. Capcom actually asked them to at one point (at which point Nintendo bought shares in Bandai instead, lol).

Oh, i didn't know this. Interesting. Wouldn't mind if Nintendo invested in Capcom either. I just said Namco because they might be receptive to it at mo and because of personal preference.

It was in mid 2004 iirc, Capcom was sort of dropping hints all over the place that Nintendo should buy in and the Japanese financial industries were speculating like crazy it was going to happen.  When Nintendo passed the offer (and added insult to injury by buying into Bandai), the GC to PS2 ports started rolling in (Viewtiful Joe, RE4, etc) and projects that were natural fits for GC started avoiding the platform entirely (Okami, Under the Skin, etc).

In the end, Nintendo just lost more Capcom support, and Bandai (fearing a Nintendo takeover) just diluted their influence with the Namco merger.  Not really a great outcome for Nintendo to be honest, which is why I kind of doubt they'll buy into another huge publisher anytime soon...