Update: Our friends at Eurogamer have gone an extra step and transcribed part of the letter from within Xbox’s virtual museum. The letter was sent by Xbox’s Rick Thompson to NoA’s business boss Jacqualee Story and attempts to set up a meeting with Nintendo’s boss Hiroshi Yamauchi and hardware chief Genyo Takeda.
“Dear Jacqualee, I appreciate you taking the time to try to arrange a meeting with Mr. Takeda and Mr. Yamauchi to discuss a possible strategic partnership between Nintendo and Microsoft on future video game platforms. I understand Mr. Takeda’s concerns about the possible partnership and will try to [obscured] the guidelines that he has requested.”
The same letter goes on to mention how Microsoft is still continuing on with its “Xbox project” and alongside it is a suggestion it would “help make Dolphin the best” – a reference to Nintendo’s GameCube.
Xbox, as you’ve probably heard by now, is currently celebrating its 20th anniversary. It’s come a long way over the past few decades, and as part of this milestone, it’s gone and created a virtual museum, which some users and media outlets are referring to as a ‘metaverse‘, where you run around as an avatar in a 3D world and look at the company’s history.
It’s doesn’t just gloss over the history of Xbox, either. The good, the bad, and the ugly are there – ranging from cancellations of certain studios to the infamous red ring of death that became a problem for the company during the Xbox 360 generation.
One eye-catching acknowledgment that we also couldn’t miss was the mention of Microsoft and Xbox attempting to acquire Nintendo in Spring 2000. Yep, it actually went there – here’s a look at what you’ll see in Xbox’s virtual museum and you can find it early on in the original Xbox section.
It’s definitely interesting to see this particular history. For Nintendo fans, the real blow, in the end, was when Microsoft purchased Rare in 2002 – who started out with Xbox exclusives such as Grabbed by the Ghoulies and nowadays are best-known for the sandbox pirate game, Sea of Thieves.
When headlines surfaced last year about Nintendo representatives laughing at Xbox’s proposal of an acquisition, later on, Robbie Bach – the former Chief Xbox Officer – added some context to the original story, explaining how the tech giant was simply “looking for partners” while exploring “every angle” and Nintendo was obviously located across the street from Microsoft’s own offices in the US.
If you’d like to visit Xbox’s 20th anniversary museum yourself and see this part of its history, all you need to do is open the following link: museum.xbox.com, and you don’t even need to be an Xbox subscriber. Of course, if these talks perhaps went a little bit differently, who knows what could have happened. Nowadays Xbox and Nintendo maintain good relations and just yesterday, Nintendo of America’s former president Reggie hosted an official Xbox panel, which is well worth watching.
What do you think about Xbox acknowledging this part of its history? How do you think an acquisition like this might have gone if it had been given the greenlight? Leave your own thoughts down below.
[source museum.xbox.com]
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