When we first started thinking about doing Xbox,
we met with Nintendo," Fries said in an interview with
IGN. "We sat down with [late Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata] and others and
we said, '
This is what we want to do, could we partner? Could we work together on this?' And basically they said no."
Fries recalled that Microsoft said during the sit-down, "We could do the software and the networking stuff, you guys could do the hardware, and we could team up and put out a product together.' They said no."
After this, then-Microsoft CEO
Bill Gates met with Sony to discuss a similar deal. "Can we work together? Can we partner?" Fries said Gates asked. "And they said no."