As Microsoft began conceiving their plans to enter the home console market, it has emerged that the company considered a number of dramatic ideas such as trying to acquire Nintendo.
That’s according to Xbox co-creator Seamus Blackley, who has shared further insight into what suggestions were bandied around when the console’s proposal was being drawn together.
“In the early days of Xbox, especially before we had figured out how to get greenlit for the project as a pure game console, everybody and their brother who saw the new project starting tried to come in and say it should be free, say it should be forced to run Windows after some period of time,” Blackley explained to GamesIndustry International.
That suggestion made sense for Microsoft, who have long dominated the computing industry with their operating system. But, rightly, it was abandoned. It didn’t prevent other ideas being thrown into the melting pot, with Blackley saying some had suggested that Xbox should focus on playing movies, that all games for the console should be made by Microsoft, and even that they should move to acquire Nintendo.
“Just name it, name a bad idea and it was something we had to deal with,” he admitted. Thankfully, that never happened!
Before Xbox, Microsoft considered trying to acquire Nintendo
