Microsoft’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 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.
What hasn’t changed is Nintendo’s undoubted attractiveness as an asset. Even after Microsoft completes the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, it could no doubt afford the purchase. But even if Spencer somehow convinced Nintendo’s board to agree, and assuming such a deal cleared antitrust regulators, it’s hard to conclude it would be, as he wrote, "a good move for both companies.”