What About A Nintendo + Microsoft Alliance

[Rafie]

Mr Khan said:

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.

Wow that was a mouthful. I was almost too intimidated to try to understand all of those articulate words and such. However, I learned something new today. Very insightful.....