man these "MS selling the xbox division" is getting as crazy as the "Nintendo going 3rd party/mobile"

Not a bad idea.

1) Nintendo needs to grow in areas of networking, online capability, and everything around that technology.
2) Nintendo needs to gain western focused IPs and additional studios that have experience in this area.

3) MS needs to pull out of hardware. Everywhere they've tried, its ultimately failed. Even with the success of X360, it still ended 3rd in market share and never made the overall division profitable.
4) MS could still make money off of the stock Nintendo would obviously need to use as part of the deal. Unless Nintendo used its large cash backlog, which wouldn't be smart.

I think its a win-win for everyone personally. So long as it does not include any form of ownership over IP by MS after the deal is done.

Even Disney has adult/mature studios and publishing arms. Nintendo could keep its Nintendo arm where its always succeeded as well as add an Xbox arm that is focused on more "M" content. To me its a great way for them to open up their portfolio and fill the gaps in both IP and technology.

wow, didn't expect this thread to blow up as much as it did.    so here's my take.


MS lost a lot of money on the original xbox.  over the 360 era MS made money but last i checked only enough to basically make the entire xbox venture about a break even.  that's not a lot of return on a 10+ year investment.

now xbone isn't doing too well.  despite the massive launch, xbox is about 10 weeks away from going negative GenOverGen in europe.   it's loosing ground quite quickly in the US as well and will probably be negative before the end of the year.

so from pure investment perspective, why take losses?  as 360 users cut and run to ps4 those xbl subscriptions will dry up and those profits from this gen will evaporate.   gaming has been a hard market lately and with amazon (and probably apple) entering the fray it's not going to get any easier.

i don't think MS has a lot to gain from xbox even if it were profitable.  the profits are miniscule compared to MS's other ventures and it does nothing to advocate MS's core offerings.

i dunno, i don't think MS needs to sell off xbox but i'd hardly blame them if they did.   i mean, would anyone in their right mind suggest sony should make a follow up to vita?!  i wouldn't,..  even as a relatively happy vita owner i think sony should kill off the psp line.  it just doesn't make sense to invest in it anymore.

Yes, oil and water mixes perfectly.

the weirdest part of the MSnintendo thing is both have hardware already out there.   what gets dropped and how damaging will that be?

...the amazon rumors make much more sense to me.  amazon takes over xbone and molds xbox into the brand they want.

haha I thought the same thing when I read the title,  "hmmmmm I bet this is going to be an opnion piece"

People are hesitent to pay money for something that is going to cost them even more money once they own it.

It's the overhead. Developing XOne's controller reportedly cost nearly 100 million. You have to pay for the hundreds of thosands of FIFA games given away at launch. You have to pay for Titanfall exclusivity. The only real reason MS ever did as well as it did in console gaming was that they were the gaming gravy train.

Come on.... Nintendo didn't even fix the Wii U situation.. Give Nintendo the Xbox One as well and Iwata will jump out of a window as fast as he can.

I think there is a reasonable chance that XBox is sold. Not this year, but if sales trend downward by this time next year we could be looking at MS exploring getting rid of the product.

At that stage, Nintendo could be one of several interested parties. Nintendo is buying back about 8% of its outstanding shares in preparation of an acquisition or merger. It would make reasonable sense for Nintendo to buy the XBox brand and assets in 2015 for some cash with MS taking a 10% stake in Nintendo. Nintendo would gain a collection of western studios and their IPs (which are different and complimentary to Nintendo's own), an already-developed next-gen system and strong online framework. The platform would also be 3rd party friendly, something Nintendo hasn't seen in some time.

Nintendo could then re-launch the XBOne with Nintendo branding, perhaps at a lower price without Kinnect. MS could perhaps continue to manage the Online network under contract, guaranteeing revenues, with perhaps a royalty for the OS and an agreement for future OS sales. MS could go from losing money selling hardware to having guaranteed profit from selling OS and Online infrastructure to a console hardware maker. This is the preferred MS business model - it's not like they make PC's.

This proposal in the editorial actually makes some sense. I think it is one of several possibilities that could play out next year if XBOne fails to take off. I can see several other companies interested in the XBox brand too. It's a fun topic to discuss.