Japanese trade publication Nikkei Business Daily filed a report on who got the better deal on Rare; Nintendo or Microsoft. Nintendo made a great $154 million, while Microsoft invested over $383 million ($33 million went to Nintendo because they owned 49% of Rare). A Nintendo executive said that "We are amazed at the amount."
According to early estimates, Nintendo the first half of the fiscal year with a net profit of $146 million, which was estimated in the April-September period. Nintendo said that the sale of Rare helped offset foreign exchange losses of $236 million.
Nintendo said that they started to think of the relationship with Rare as early as 2000 when the GBA and GCN were introduced. Since Rare was only making 1.5% of Nintendo's sales in 2001, Nintendo felt that Rare was too much of a risk. Furthermore, a Nintendo official said that he no longer sensed the enthusiasm with Rare's principal of the devlopment team.
"They take too much time with product development to generate meaningful results for us." Said Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.
One reason why Microsoft bought Rare, according to Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer, is that you can find fans of Rare throughout the world. Rare is also scheduled to release 5 games over the next two years for the Xbox.
Nikkei has deemed that Nintendo is the short term winner of the deal. The huge cash return and reduction of administrative work tied to dealing with Rare were two reasons for their decision.
