What About A Nintendo + Microsoft Alliance

[Mr Khan]

Goatseye said:

Mr Khan said:

Teeqoz said:
Does anyone know if Nintendo has a buy-out defense in place?

Old Man Yamauchi was their buyout defense, in that he was one of the largest individual shareholders with a lot of influence over others. Since he passed, Nintendo spent a lot buying up many of his shares.

Plus Japanese companies very rarely get bought out in hostile takeovers. That's why you get more partnerships like Square Enix, Bandai Namco, Tecmo Koei.

Why are they so reluctant to Western or foreign partnership/ownership?

I understand that they've been a secluded people since WWII and that affected their culture; however, businesess wise that really doesn't help their situation.

A lot of their once titans in the eletronic market, are not competitive and they're not following Western and Korean innovation. It looks like they lack funds and fresh ideas that abund in the Western market.

Their corporate culture has always been more insular and slow-moving. It has its advantages, because then you get companies with stronger continuity of leadership and a more unified vision for what they want to achieve (unlike, say, Western companies which buy, sell, and swap subsidiaries like they're Monopoly properties), which helped them greatly in the era of "synergy" for instance: Western companies tried to synergize, Japanese companies were already synergized with one company operating in numerous interrelated markets, like Sony's sort-of total-media-control scheme, where they produce video games, computer programs, movies, TV shows, and music, and then produce everything that can run all of this content

The corporate culture left them poorly prepared for globalization, but it endures largely because of a practice called "Share interlocking" which helps hedge many companies against foreign buyouts, as well as government subsidies to keep failing companies on life support, and a far weaker culture of shareholder activism (basically the companies do what they want and damn the shareholders).

Part of the present reforms under Shinzo Abe are trying to open this process up to make it more like other countries, but as with all other things in Japan, true reform is slow to come.

Nintendo, meanwhile, is insular even as Japanese companies are reckoned. Part of it makes sense, because they are still a very small company with few employees (home and abroad only about, what, 5,000 on the payroll?), so they're not managing behemoth empires like Sony or Toyota which would necessitate greater plurality of thought, and Iwata's administration has led to a yet more close-minded corporate culture (not that it hurt them, not until the Wii started to peter out). Them becoming partners with Microsoft is difficult to fathom.