Former Microsoft employee says the company almost bought SEGA, instead came out with Xbox to combat Sony

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Austin(@NE_Austin) in General Gaming, News, Podcast Stories

Well here’s something I didn’t know: Back in the early 2000s, Microsoft was strongly considering purchasing SEGA and using them to make a game console to combat Sony! I guess it makes sense if you think about it, and it would have been significantly cheaper to buy SEGA and use their resources for game console development as opposed to starting from scratch on your own. So why didn’t the deal work out?

“There were three companies at that point in time, I think this was [Sony,] SEGA and Nintendo. There was always talk maybe we buy SEGA or something like that; that never materialised, but we were actually able to license them what they call Windows CE, the younger brother of Windows, to run on their system and make that their platform.
“But for Bill [Gates] this wasn’t enough, he didn’t think that SEGA had enough muscle to eventually stop Sony so we did our own Xbox thing.”

– Former Microsoft Employee Joachim Kempin

Man, wouldn’t it be weird if SEGA was still in the business of making consoles!? Especially if they were owned by Microsoft! I’m not sure that things would have gone better for both companies in the long run though, considering how successful the Xbox brand has been worldwide.

Via IGN