Microsoftilla ja Nintendolla on nähty viimeisen muutaman vuoden aikana yhteistyötä yllättävilläkin tavoilla. Minecraft on saanut Super Marionsa, Banjo Kazooie on mäiskinyt Super Smash Bros. Ultimatessa, ja toki Ori and the Blind Forrest sekä Cuphead on nähty Nintendo Switchillä.
Xbox-pomo Phil Spencer on paljastanut haastattelussa, että suhde Nintendoon on hyvällä mallilla. Spencer on myös tuttuja sekä Nintendon johtajan Shuntaro Furukawan kanssa että Pohjois-Amerikan Nintendon pomon Doug Bowserin kanssa.
"The relationship with Nintendo is great. Doug Bowser and I, we talk often. Furakawa-san, the CEO of Nintendo, and I know each other well and we have conversations."
Vaikuttaa kuitenkin siltä, että tällä hetkellä Microsoftin pelien ryntäystä Nintendon alustalle ei ole odotettavissa.
"I will say that I think the individual IP by IP to different platforms, I can see [it] can kind of get confusing to customers over time. We've been learning, some of our development partners have really wanted to go do this, and we want to support the desires of our creative talent. Some of this have been partner lead.
I think more and more about what does a full Xbox experience mean on different platforms. Right now, it seems like when any game comes out, there's that, "is this one going here, is this one going there." I'd rather be able to set more of an Xbox-level expectation for our fans on where things are going to go. I thought we did that with our first party when we talked about games shipping on Xbox and PC, and I got some blow-back from certain people in certain groups on that, but at least we set an expectation on that. I'd rather see us get to that point on the different pieces of hardware we're on, so I guess I'll kind of leave it there.
I definitely have a ton of respect for the role that Nintendo plays, and I love having great games on their platform. I don't really love this idea that for every one of our games, there becomes this little rumor on it "is it going to end up on the Switch or not." I feel we should set a better expectation with our fans than that."
Kiitokset, Go Nintendo