‘Microsoft should sell its Xbox business to Nintendo’ – Reader’s Feature

A reader suggests that in order to avoid being broken up by antitrust investigations Microsoft should consider selling Xbox to Nintendo.

Whatever hobby you like, everyone thinks they’d do a better job than the people that are actually in charge. Whether it’s being the manager of your favourite football team or doing a better job than the director of the latest film you saw, we’re all armchair experts about something. But with video games it genuinely does feel like the fans would make more sensible decisions.

Not in terms of the games themselves – it’s never true for anything creative – but in terms of the businesspeople in charge. In fact, I think my parents could probably do a better job than most gaming execs and they’ve never played a video game in their life.

Sony has been a shambles for years now, for no apparent reason, but they’re at least operating on autopilot. Microsoft is even worse though and has been on the edge of disaster for two straight generations, more if you count the rot as setting in with the introduction of Kinect.

For most of that time Phil Spencer has been in charge and I think it’s fair to say he’s not done a very good job. His biggest achievements have been introducing Game Pass, which didn’t take off the way he anticipated, and buying Activision Blizzard and Bethesda, which was an obscene amount of money that has not done one thing for their console business.

Microsoft’s plans for Xbox seem all over the place at the moment and I guess they’re waiting to see if Call Of Duty boosts Game Pass, but I think we all know it’s not going to. I’m sure we’re get stories, from them, of it increasing subscription 200%, or whatever, but 200% of zero is still zero.

Then it’ll be waiting for the next ‘big’ first party release to give consoles sales a boost and then when that doesn’t work out it’ll be the next thing, and so on. Which has been the pattern since at least the Xbox One era.

Microsoft’s only plan now seems to be to throw money at the situation and hope something works out, but that’s not a plan. That’s the absence of a plan. They can’t even get their multiformat position settled, so neither us or them has any idea what’s going on.

So my plan is simple: sell the Xbox business to Nintendo. I’d say Sony but Sony already do most of the things Xbox does, so that’d just create a monopoly. But there’s almost zero crossover between Nintendo and Xbox, which in theory makes them made for each other.

I name drop the word monopoly on purpose because I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the American government is starting to get very proactive about monopolies at the moment, with talk of breaking up Google, Amazon, and others using antitrust laws. If the Activision Blizzard acquisition had been this year instead of last I don’t think it would’ve even been allowed to go through.

Given Microsoft is a $3 trillion company, that has lots of monopolies in lots of areas, I think it’s obvious they’re going to be next on the chopping block, especially as Satya Nadella tried to pretend that gaming was one of the three main pillars of the company. That’s obviously nonsense but they said it anyway and so that’s painted an additional target on their back.

If I was them, I’d recognise that things aren’t going well, and that Phil Spencer is not the man, and offload the whole Xbox business to another company. Nintendo is the obvious choice because they do (usually) know what they’re doing and they’d be nicely complemented by everything Xbox does. Although you’d have to want them to promise to keep all current multiformat games multiformat (which is more than Microsoft has done, especially when it comes to Bethesda).

If it’s not Nintendo then I’m sure someone like Amazon or Apple or Google would be interested, but they’ve already made it clear they don’t understand gaming. Plus, if they’re in danger of getting broken up I don’t think buying Xbox is going to help their case.

I’ll make it clear I don’t think there’s any chance of Nintendo actually buying Xbox. Nintendo hates spending money and even though they could afford it I don’t think they’d ever empty their war chest enough to do it.

But the antitrust thing, and the danger of Microsoft getting broken up, is real. And considering how badly Xbox is doing right now, the obvious thing is to offer up the Xbox business and pretend that’s a massive sacrifice, even though they’d probably be glad to be rid of it.

By reader Squarehead

The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.

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