Gates to Yamauchi: If you let us buy Nintento, we will do it

"There is no way Yamauchi would give up his pride and joy during his long lifetime."

they don't need Yamauchis share holding.
 
Personally, I would prefer a Microsoft and Sony merger. It would bring the two companies handful of good first party games on to one system. At the same time it would eliminate alot of the multiplatform redundancy we currently put up with. Then 3rd partys could concentrate their efforts on making their current games better, or just making more good games period.
 
Spike said:
From what I see, gamers want to see Halo, Mario, Zelda and Metroid on one platform. So, wouldn't it be easier to move Halo to a Nintendo system, than to move all of Nintendo's titles to the Halo system? :)

Seriously though, I think it would be advantageous to both companies. Microsoft could release their wares through Nintendo in Japan, and Nintendo through Microsoft elsewhere. Personally though, I don't want to see it happen, but I could see the reasoning behind it if it did.
Click to expand...

NO. Um. Why a buyout, why not a pitch/proposal/co-operative project.

MS greed and desperation. That's all.
 
Lisa Lashes said:
That then increases the potential of a sale by astronomical proportions. Yamauchi is rendered meaningless in this equation.
Click to expand...

Not really. What percentage of Nintendo stock is owned by Nintendo itself? 10% can be more powerful if only 80% of the stock is owned outside Nintendo itself.
 
seriously though. All the money in the world...

would it even work? would a WHOLELY JAPANESE COMPANY with years of tradition making great games/consoles, submit to becoming a sub-ordinate arm of an AMERICAN company? Would Nintendo; stubborn obstinate Nintendo submit to the American machismo of MS's coporate engine? We've all heard how MS japan managed to royally piss off and embarrass their staff.

I think for jap pride alone; this will never happen. For the same reason why SEGA ended up with Sammy. If anything, Nintendo will join forces with Sony to unbalance MS's advance.
 
TheGreenGiant said:
seriously though. All the money in the world...

would it even work? would a WHOLELY JAPANESE COMPANY with years of tradition making great games/consoles, submit to becoming a sub-ordinate arm of an AMERICAN company? Would Nintendo; stubborn obstinate Nintendo submit to the American machismo of MS's coporate engine? We've all heard how MS japan managed to royally piss off and embarrass their staff.

I think for jap pride alone; this will never happen. For the same reason why SEGA ended up with Sammy. If anything, Nintendo will join forces with Sony to unbalance MS's advance.
Click to expand...

No, it wouldn't work. You know why? Because MS is ultimately like EA. They buy these developers promising the world, and they might let them do their own thing for a while, but eventually, MS will put down the iron glove and force whoever they own to do things their way.

Nintendo has it's pride. It's been in the entertainment industry since the 1800's. To sell out to a company that made itself based on the stealing of content provided to another company, MS-DOS, it's not going to happen.

Funny how MS always claims that Nintendo isn't a competitor, but they want to own their IP's pretty badly.
 
DCharlie said:
Yamauchi owns 10% of Nintendos stock.

THATS ALL.
Click to expand...

Are you basing that off of the old 'Yamauchi sells stock to start up QFund and only retains 10% of shares' story from several years ago? If so, that's not nearly the entire story. Remember he sold the stock to create the fund, but the shares were bought back by Nintendo over the course of several years (as were other outstanding shares during that protect our shares phase when the shareprice was dipping) Selling the stock and rebuying it was always part of the strategy (he stated that before he sold it). You can find stories on google that point to that.
 
Spike said:
No, it wouldn't work. You know why? Because MS is ultimately like EA. They buy these developers promising the world, and they might let them do their own thing for a while, but eventually, MS will put down the iron glove and force whoever they own to do things their way.

Nintendo has it's pride. It's been in the entertainment industry since the 1800's. To sell out to a company that made itself based on the stealing of content provided to another company, MS-DOS, it's not going to happen.

Funny how MS always claims that Nintendo isn't a competitor, but they want to own their IP's pretty badly.
Click to expand...

:D it was a rheotrical queSTION>
 
"Are you basing that off of the old 'Yamauchi sells stock to start up QFund and only retains 10% of shares' story from several years ago? If so, that's not nearly the entire story. Remember he sold the stock to create the fund, but the shares were bought back by Nintendo over the course of several years (as were other outstanding shares during that protect our shares phase when the shareprice was dipping) Selling the stock and rebuying it was always part of the strategy (he stated that before he sold it). You can find stories on google that point to that."

No, i'm basing this off the actual stock holding figures, which are accurate as of this morning.

He owns 10%. Together with nintendo they own.... well, the next biggest owner has around 6% and it isn't Nintendo.

So together they own a max of 16% of the company. So that leaves 84% of the company owned by investors.

"would it even work? would a WHOLELY JAPANESE COMPANY with years of tradition making great games/consoles, submit to becoming a sub-ordinate arm of an AMERICAN company?"

And if MS buy out 70% of the shares, tell me what choice does this "wholey japanese company" have in the matter? It doesn't matter if they are Japanese, chinese, mexican or alien - if the shares that they have no control over get sold , then there is nothing that they can do to stop it.
 
Woah. Where did you find the figures, BTW? I've been looking for hours! Might as well post the figures in the thread.
 
Toyo Keizai
it's provided to us at work, but i'm sure that info should be out there.
 
When's EA going to get in on the action? EA and MS should race to see who can buy the majority of shares first ;)
 
I'm sorry DC but MS won't be buying Nintendo today, tomorrow or in the future but keep your dream alive, per haps someday you'd have the last laugh while playing Nintendo games on xbox 18
 
I'll google, but I haven't been able to find a thing all day. Just a bunch of articles about the Q fund, the selling, the buying back, yadda yadda yadda. And most of them were from 1999-2001 timeframe. Could you at least tell us the names of the other investors (if it's not too big a list)


(you're an investment banker, right?...or was that Justin? anyway please let us in on the info)
 
I hope someday Nintendo concentrates only on software. They're the best game software developer imo, and being able to buy less consoles and still play nintendo games is a big plus. I basically only buy nintendo games for my gamecube. Everything else, xbox or ps2.
 
-1 consoles to be bought, and real competition for Sony. I'd want this to happen.

I've been suspecting a buyout for some time. Nintendo allowed Rare to go away when they were financially sound. There's no sense in selling a company that you just invested millions in them in their new HQ. Rare would have paid off anything that they would have consumed by making more GC games. And there would be more than what Xbox is getting because programmers had to toss all their work and start over for Xbox.

MS still allows Rare to make GBA games.

MS and Nintendo's next gen consoles are freakin identical.

And I wouldn't take any comments from Nintendo as 100% truth. Don't you remember how Rare denied an MS buyout? But then there's Gates comment, so I think they're still negotiating.

It would be great if Nintendo focused on software. More brilliant games. Less bitchy fanboys.
 
Lisa Lashes said:
That then increases the potential of a sale by astronomical proportions. Yamauchi is rendered meaningless in this equation.
Click to expand...


Not exactly. 10% of a company's shares is itself a huge number. People do this all the time when this type of issue comes up here. People just compare the numbers, but when 10% of a company is consolidated in one individual, and then 90% spread across a few million, that one person has a huge influence.
 
DCharlie said:
"Are you basing that off of the old 'Yamauchi sells stock to start up QFund and only retains 10% of shares' story from several years ago? If so, that's not nearly the entire story. Remember he sold the stock to create the fund, but the shares were bought back by Nintendo over the course of several years (as were other outstanding shares during that protect our shares phase when the shareprice was dipping) Selling the stock and rebuying it was always part of the strategy (he stated that before he sold it). You can find stories on google that point to that."

No, i'm basing this off the actual stock holding figures, which are accurate as of this morning.

He owns 10%. Together with nintendo they own.... well, the next biggest owner has around 6% and it isn't Nintendo.

So together they own a max of 16% of the company. So that leaves 84% of the company owned by investors.

"would it even work? would a WHOLELY JAPANESE COMPANY with years of tradition making great games/consoles, submit to becoming a sub-ordinate arm of an AMERICAN company?"

And if MS buy out 70% of the shares, tell me what choice does this "wholey japanese company" have in the matter? It doesn't matter if they are Japanese, chinese, mexican or alien - if the shares that they have no control over get sold , then there is nothing that they can do to stop it.
Click to expand...

Well Nintendo itself has to figure in there. I believe their buyback last year encompassed something around 5 or 6% of the company's shares. What percentage of the company's shares are outstanding?
 
I know the two have nothing to do with each other, but isn't there a rumor going around that MS is in talks to buy AOL? =P
 
DC, you're going to have to provide me with evidence (a link, something) that Nintendo only owns 16% of their own company. (not that I doubt you) Especially with the hundreds of millions in shares they bought back twice to stabilize stock prices & prevent such an event as a hostile takeover from ever taking place. MS offered to buy them once before, Nintendo declined. MS was also looking to purchase Sega, the asking price was too high iirc. Ultimately it comes down to what's the most profitable, Nintendo's business model is ironclad regarding profit stability & efficiency. They posted their 1st loss in what, forever last year despite YOY growth due to the weak dollar vs. the yen. It simply won't happen. Nintendo is projected (& on track) to make $628 million dollars in operating profits this fiscal year.
 
even if they did buy all the shares; do shareholders get to decide who makes the games? DO they tell shigeru to do this this this. I'm sure if this does (WILL NOT) happen; the old hands can say thank you goodbye and leave MS a shell. Its not like buying a company equates buying quality/loyalty

for eg:

see RARE.
 
FitzOfRage said:
Not exactly. 10% of a company's shares is itself a huge number. People do this all the time when this type of issue comes up here. People just compare the numbers, but when 10% of a company is consolidated in one individual, and then 90% spread across a few million, that one person has a huge influence.
Click to expand...

This is true, & if Nintendo now owns 16% as is perhaps the case, they become even more powerful & influential.
 
"This is true, & if Nintendo now owns 16% as is perhaps the case, they become even more powerful & influential."

how?

What if a company offers a buy out at a good share price in which all those investors who don't CARE about Nintendo as a company would make a handy profit?

Investors are in for cash making purposes, and i don't think many are that attached to their shares.
 
It seems like an awesome idea at first, but there will exist a lot of conflict, and thus, Nintendo as we know it may not exist. It's one thing to get all the IPs for your own console, but at the same time you're gonna kill off any more innovations from Nintendo.

Nintendo's making money right now...there is no need to do something like this.

BUT, it looks like an uphill struggle for the next generation. It may be quite rocky, and partnerships like this could help guarentee some sort of success, whereas as of this moment the only one guarenteed some success is Sony.
 
You know, I'm not sure Japanese investors would want to sell out to an American company... especially given the Japanese long term investment model. It might be a good deal NOW, but why would selling out to MS be good in the long run?

Heck, if Miyamoto left... he could probably start his own studio, take a huge chunk of Nintendo with him, AND get nearly any other designer to come work with him. Buying out Nintendo will only work if you know that you'll retain the key Nintendo people... and I'm not sure any of them would go along with it.
 
This is true, & if Nintendo now owns 16% as is perhaps the case, they become even more powerful & influential.
Click to expand...

Well I could definitely use a little bit of clarification on that. For one thing, Yamauchi and Nintendo are still separate entities legally. So if he owns 10%, and the next largest shareholder owns 6%, but it isn't Nintendo (according to DC), and the other 84% are investors, it sounds like DC is actually saying Nintendo owns none of their own shares, which doesn't sound right.

So I'm assuming those numbers represent only the outstanding shares, because that's the only reason to exclude Nintendo itself. For any company, only a certain amount of shares actually trade to the public, while the company hold onto the rest. Now that number can vary greatly from company to company, but ii would definitely be an important consideration in determining how easy it would be to buy out Nintendo. Because you're talking about investors owning a percentage of a percentage of Nintendo.

To really get an idea how tough it might be for Microsoft, it would be useful to know what percentage of the company shares are actually outstanding, along with how many shares are held by insiders (Yamauchi may be the biggest one inside Nintendo that own shares but he's not the only one). DC may have access to this information but the rest of the kind of working with bits and pieces.

But certainly the fact that Bill Gates himself is hinging this offer on the willingness of Nintendo seems to indicate that he doesn't think he could muscle through a deal. If he wanted he could certainly just put an unsolicited bid out there for shareholders to vote on, as he could have done 4 or 5 years ago when they reportedly looked at this before. But if he knows that it is dead in the water anyway without the support of Nintendo and Yamauchi that would be pointless, which could be why they've never done such thing and why he's taking his case directly to Yamauchi, not shareholders in general.
 
DavidDayton said:
You know, I'm not sure Japanese investors would want to sell out to an American company... especially given the Japanese long term investment model. It might be a good deal NOW, but why would selling out to MS be good in the long run?

Heck, if Miyamoto left... he could probably start his own studio, take a huge chunk of Nintendo with him, AND get nearly any other designer to come work with him. Buying out Nintendo will only work if you know that you'll retain the key Nintendo people... and I'm not sure any of them would go along with it.
Click to expand...

Good point, didn't think of that. But Miyamoto and all those other designers and developers would still make games, and that's all that would matter to me. Nintendo is just a name, the game designers are what matter
 
"I'm not sure Japanese investors would want to sell out to an American company... "

Who says they are all Japanese???
 
From the CNN Money article...
Analysts laughed – literally – when told about the report.

"All I know is since Microsoft announced it was getting in the gaming business, there have been rumors, but I just can't imagine Nintendo selling," said Mike Wallace of UBS Securities.
Click to expand...
 
can you pass me on that link please? That's interesting, because i simply can't see what Nintendo would have other than trying to advise stock holders not to sell.
 
DCharlie said:
can you pass me on that link please? That's interesting, because i simply can't see what Nintendo would have other than trying to advise stock holders not to sell.
Click to expand...


Well that goes back to the question I asked about how many of those stock holders are connected to Nintendo already. I mean I assume Yamauch isn't the only person at Nintendo in the last 20 years to get company stock (even though he obviously has the most). So I'm wondering what percentage of stock is held by insiders in addition to Yamauchi.


Edit: Here's the link
http://money.cnn.com/2004/08/04/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm
 
"Well that goes back to the question I asked about how many of those stock holders are connected to Nintendo already. I mean I assume Yamauch isn't the only person at Nintendo in the last 20 years to get company stock (even though he obviously has the most). So I'm wondering what percentage of stock is held by insiders in addition to Yamauchi."

well, just checking and the listed officer holdership is around 10% too.
I guess that pushes up the total share to 25% or so, but that still isn't enought to guarantee warding off a buyout.

thanks for the link.
 
So MS buys out Nintendo in a hostile takeover. News of the buyout would end up all over the media in Japan. The idea of an iconic Japanese corporation being forcibly taken over by an American company, especially one with a reputation for arrogance and ignorance of the Japanese market, isn't going to sit too well with the average Japanese consumer. In the wake of such a takeover, you'd likely see the company hemorrhage talent as the big-name developers depart en masse. MS would end up with a husk of a company, gutted of any creative talent they'd hoped to acquire, and the Nintendo brand, so irreparably tarnished in Japan as a result of the takeover that any chance of using it to help them secure a foothold there would be lost.

In light of that, I can see why Bill Gates would want Yamauchi's blessing before moving. Anything less than a willing surrender would render Nintendo unsuitable for Microsoft's needs. And somehow, I don't see that blessing forthcoming anytime soon.
 
efralope said:
I thought it was a bunch of Japanese banks that held a lot of the Nintendo stock, I remember hearing that somewhere...
Click to expand...
Was some post on the old forum how Nintendo are trying to corner Bandai with those banks

Yeah, Microsoft could probably do a hostile takeover of they really wanted to, but they would only get an empty casket
 
"In light of that, I can see why Bill Gates would want Yamauchi's blessing before moving. Anything less than a willing surrender would render Nintendo unsuitable for Microsoft's needs. And somehow, I don't see that blessing forthcoming anytime soon."

Yup, that's how i see it.
 
Drey1082 said:
I hope someday Nintendo concentrates only on software. They're the best game software developer imo, and being able to buy less consoles and still play nintendo games is a big plus. I basically only buy nintendo games for my gamecube. Everything else, xbox or ps2.
Click to expand...

Yes. Nintendo will go software only in order to accommodate you and only you.
 
If you want Nintendo software, then find a way to buy Nintendo systems. It's as simple as that
 
...especially one with a reputation for arrogance and ignorance of the Japanese market, isn't going to sit too well with the average Japanese consumer.
Click to expand...

Whoa! I didn't know about this. What happened exactly?
 
DCharlie said:
"In light of that, I can see why Bill Gates would want Yamauchi's blessing before moving. Anything less than a willing surrender would render Nintendo unsuitable for Microsoft's needs. And somehow, I don't see that blessing forthcoming anytime soon."

Yup, that's how i see it.
Click to expand...

Me as well.... Like I was saying at the start of this thread... Nintendo can be bought... bulletproof it a joke when you are dealing with a company that has a much cash as MS. Timing is everything as they have been learning... buy when the time is right.... This is why they pulled out of the Sega runnings....
 
MS should be wary about the way they approach Ninty buyout. If they pull it in an inappropriate manner, they'll be left with an empty shell, and Japan will irreversibly become 100% Sony territory.
 
"and Japan will irreversibly become 100% Sony territory."

um. yes. that 0.000000001% will make all the difference! *JOKE*
 
The last Monty game I bought back in the summer of '87, while on holidays in Spain, was Aufwiedersehen Monty. Great, great game.
 
Nintendo Dismisses Microsoft Advances
Says company is not for sale.

August 05, 2004 - On Wednesday the German financial magazine WirtschaftsWoche published that Microsoft head Bill Gates was interested in talking with Nintendo's former president and backer Hiroshi Yamauchi about buying Nintendo. Today Nintendo issued an official response that it is, simply, not for sale.

"Nintendo is not on sale, and there is no such talk at all," Nintendo public relations chief Yasuhiro Minagawa said.
Nintendo Co. Ltd. continues to profit from strong sales of its Game Boy Advance handheld hardware and software, as well as modest sales of its GameCube home console. The company this November will release the Nintendo DS handheld in the US, followed by a December release in Japan, according to sources. Nintendo is planning to showcase its next-generation console, codenamed Revolution, at 2005's Electronics Entertainment Expo 2004 in Los Angeles.

"If Hiroshi Yamauchi phones me, I will pick up at once," Gates told WirtschaftsWoche. It would appear that such a phone call will have to wait.

http://cube.ign.com/articles/536/536275p1.html?fromint=1
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Will you buy a Switch 2 OLED if Nintendo ditches VRR since it is a challenge to implement it on handhelds?
2
64
687
onnextflix5 replied
Cities: Skylines now has a subscription base to access DLC if you don't want to buy it
10
185
Spukc replied
If I buy Driveclub today, will it download all the updates?
8
1K
Fake replied
let's say the ps6 comes out in 2027, would you buy it?
2 3 4 5
242
2K
RoboFu replied
  • Poll
Would you buy GTA 6 if released at $100 US dollars?
2 3 4 5
230
9K
MLSabre replied
Top Bottom