Nintendo/Iwata's Bias Against The West

[sidmeiernintifan]

I think you are forgetting what Microsoft was in the early 2000s. Bill Gates was the guy who would appeared every eyear on magazines as the wealthiest man in the world, Microsoft was in their prime back then.
Meanwhile, Rare was "bought" by Nintendo around 1994, when Nintendo was the top dog of the video games industry, but it was surpassed greatly by Sony in the late 90s, and in the early 2000s lots of people wrote about how Nintendo wouldnt be able to compete with the big boys Sony and Microsoft.

I am sure that Rare sold themselves happily to Microsoft because:
1) Being desired by the wealthiest man in the world and the most important company in the world felt great, probably a great boost to their ego
2) They thought their future would be safer under Microsoft than under Nintendo, no one imagines Nintendo would get a stroke of luck and win a generation against those huge companies.

Something else, Nintendo probably saw Rare as less worthy once the first person shooter talent left the company, because it was them with GoldenEye that really sold a lot of n64s. Nintendo of Japan needed Rare for that, not for Banjo Kazooie.

I think Nintendo doesn't like to buy western companies because they don't like something which is common in western companies, which is the high rotation of workers because they quit and create their own company or go work somewhere else. In Japan people work for the same company till they die.