Gearoid Reidy, Columnist

Microsoft Buying Nintendo Would Have Been a Disaster

The US tech giant entertained the idea of acquiring the Mario maker, but let’s keep this one in the realm of fantasy.

Here we go!

Photographer: SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

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Microsoft Corp.’s video-game head Phil Spencer might have been correct when he wrote, in a piece of corporate cringe straight out of HBO’s Succession, that acquiring Nintendo Co. would be a “career moment” for him.

Spencer’s dream of buying the venerable Japanese firm was revealed, alongside other confidential plans, in an accidental leak of emails related to Microsoft’s video-game operations recently uploaded to a federal court website. The email concerning Nintendo is dated 2020; Microsoft has acknowledged the leaked documents, but says “much has changed” since they were written.