You might as well ask what if Atari had been the face of Nintendo in America like it was originally planned.?

What if? questions are amusing to muse over, but its impossible to know. So I find the exercise rather pointless.

It would have been better for both Sega and MS I believe, I mean Sega is now starting to slide out of profitablity and the way they have been acting I don't see them doing much to change this.

MS needed 1st party strength a lot last gen and still does this one, so having all those Sega franchises lined up in all those different genres and pumping money into them and financing them would have worked out really well for them I believe.

Instead of going for Rare, they should have gone for Sega.

I'm glad they didn't. I like sonic on Nintendo. And nights makes me happy too. But it would help MS sales in Japan if they did.

Or how 'bout MS Xbox in the US, and Sega Xbox in Japan.... Eh. Eh.

Sqrl has it right.

MS was buying an image. That said, hypothetically, they wouldn't be loyal to their new (that being SEGA's) franchises if they didn't prove worthy enough for their own desires.

Anyone remember what Xbox did with its first mascot? Abe from the Odyssey collection? Yeah, Sonic would have been dead just the same.

Sega's games franchises will defnitely boost Mcirosoft's first party lineup. They just need to make good games out of those franchises. If they do, it's gonna be a more intense battle between MS and Wii. But that was if they bough Sega six years ago. Now there are a lot of publishers that is bigger that Sega in terms of franchises.

while i agree that a Sega Xbox would have done better, I dont think the Japanese would have warmed to it that much, knowing that it was basically MS in disguise. Unless MS let Sega take alot of control (something that wouldnt happen) then they would have basically pushed the same games that Japan didnt want on their Sega Xbox.

The Sega name had already become a failure hardware wise at that point, and releasing another Sega branded machine wouldnt have been much different, atleast not in the west.

Sega as a software company just arnt strong enough, alot of poeple look back and think abou tthe classics etc, but theres also alot of forgotten rubbish too.

I dont think MS made a mistake buying rare either, they thought they were getting the company rare, not the name that was living in the shadow of its previous classics, had they got the real rare that produced Jet Force Gemini, Conker, Banjo and so on, it would have been far far better than getting Sega. Either way they got a bum deal ;)

MS games division would be called SEGA instead of Microsoft Game Studios thats all that would happen because the Sonic games would go even further down hill when all the devs left and went to Nintendo and Sony because they dont want to work for an American company and MS has DOA so it doesnt need Virtua Fighter it has Forza and PGR so it doesnt need SEGA Rally the consoles would be called THE SEGA because the name Xbox is really bad compared to SEGA or the XboxMegaDrive and XboxGenesis in America due to patent issues.....again, but these names are awful so stick with THE SEGA and THE SEGA2.Sales would also be alot different now due to the SEGA fans still buying SEGA console and Nintendo and SEGA would have another console war with Sony in the background slowly taking Europe and Nintendo and SEGA(MS) would be out doing each other and things would be so different.

I think that would have been a good move, if done properly. But they should have bought them early enough and continue the dreamcast, because releasing another Sega console so short after the last would have destroyed Sega's name as a hardware manufacturer completely, while buying them as a software only company wouldn't have helped much.

If they had done this, Microsoft would have gone a completely different way first, but that'd may have given them the foothold in japan they are desperately trying to get now.

However, it'd have been better for Sega one of the hardware manufacturers had bought them, they could have kept up the quality in their games better I think. From Sega's point of view, Nintendo would have been the best owner I think because Sega games would have sold better on a Nintendo platform and The Cube would have sold better too.