Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation
Type	Public
Founded	April 4th, 1975
Headquarters	Redmond, Washington
Key people	John W. Thompson Brad Smith Satya Nadella Bill Gates Paul Allen Phil Spencer
Industry	Technology
Products	Computers, Software, Video Games
Employees	221,000 (2023)
Website	Microsoft Corporation
Article on Wikipedia	Microsoft

Microsoft is an American technology company founded on April 4th, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. The origins of Microsoft can be traced back to 1972 when Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Traf-O-Data, which primarily developed computers meant to calculate and interpret raw data collected by traffic counters and cameras. In 1975, the two developed and pitched a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 microcomputer. Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) agreed to sell the interpreter, now called Altair BASIC. Gates and Allen would shut down Traf-O-Data and establish Microsoft around this time. The company would become a leader in the technology industry, with operating systems like Xenix and MS-DOS, and later Microsoft Windows, as well as the Microsoft Office Suite, the Internet Explorer web browser, the MSX line of personal computers, and the Bing search engine. The company is also known for manufacturing hardware products, including the Xbox video game consoles. Its video game division, Xbox Game Studios, publishes well-known series by in-house studios such as Halo, Age of Empires, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Forza, Fable, and State of Decay, in addition to indie-developed titles such as Super Lucky's Tale, Ori and the Blind Forest, and its sequel Ori and the Will of the Wisps. The company's portfolio also includes franchises from companies acquired by them, including Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, Killer Instinct, Battletoads, Conker (under Rare, acquired in 2002), Minecraft (under Mojang Studios, acquired in 2014), Gears of War (acquired in 2014 from Epic Games), Pillars of Eternity, The Outer Worlds (under Obsidian Entertainment, acquired in 2018), Wasteland, The Bard's Tale (under inXile Entertainment, acquired in 2018), Hellblade (under Ninja Theory, acquired in 2018), Psychonauts (under Double Fine Productions, acquired in 2019), Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Dishonored, The Evil Within (under Zenimax Media, acquired in 2021), Call of Duty, Guitar Hero, Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, Tony Hawk's, Candy Crush Saga, Diablo, Warcraft, StarCraft, and Overwatch (under Activision Blizzard, acquired in 2023).

On September 24th, 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare, alongside the license for their original intellectual properties, such as Banjo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark, and Conker. Rare's contributions to the Donkey Kong and Star Fox franchises remain under Nintendo's ownership, excluding certain characters from Diddy Kong Racing. On November 6th, 2014, Microsoft purchased Mojang Studios, alongside the Minecraft franchise, from its original founder, Markus Persson. On September 21st, 2020, Microsoft announced that it agreed to acquire ZeniMax Media, which was finalized on March 9th, 2021. On December 2nd, 2020, Microsoft acquired popular tournament organizing website smash.gg, later rebranded to start.gg. On January 18th, 2022, Microsoft announced intentions to purchase Activision Blizzard and all its subsidiaries. After several delays and interventions from international trade commissions, the deal was finalized on October 13th, 2023.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Microsoft owns Rare Ltd., the company that created the Banjo-Kazooie franchise and owns its titular characters, Banjo and Kazooie. The Banjo-Kazooie universe debuted in Ultimate as DLC on September 4th, 2019, with Banjo & Kazooie as a playable fighter, alongside the stage Spiral Mountain, a location from the original Banjo-Kazooie games, multiple spirits, and 10 music tracks from both Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie, including a remix composed by Grant Kirkhope, the original composer of the Banjo-Kazooie games.

Microsoft also owns Mojang Studios, the company that created the Minecraft franchise. The default skin from the game, Steve, was released in Ultimate as the second fighter for Fighters Pass Vol. 2 on October 13th, 2020, along with alternate costumes based on the secondary skin Alex and two common enemies from the games, the Zombie and the Enderman, alongside the stage Minecraft World, multiple spirits and 7 music tracks from Minecraft, Minecraft Earth and Minecraft Dungeons.

Three characters from properties published by the Microsoft-owned Bethesda Softworks: Vault Boy from the Fallout series, the Dragonborn from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and Doom Slayer from the Doom series, also appear as DLC Mii Fighter costumes. It should be noted that Bethesda was acquired by Microsoft after the Vault Boy costume's release.

Gallery

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  The logo for Microsoft's video game division, Xbox Game Studios.

Trivia

• As Microsoft produces the Xbox line of game consoles, it is the first, and so far only, company with content featured in the Super Smash Bros. series which currently competes with Nintendo. It is the second company with content featured in the Super Smash Bros. series to compete with Nintendo at any point in its history, following Sega and preceding SNK, although both other companies stopped making consoles prior to providing content for Super Smash Bros.
• Currently, all Microsoft properties represented in the Super Smash Bros. series are franchises that became property of the company via way of acquisition of their development companies.
  • Perfect Dark was owned by Rare prior to Microsoft's acquisition of the company in 2002.
  • Banjo-Kazooie was co-owned by Nintendo and Rare before the rights were transferred over to the latter during the buyout.
  • Minecraft was owned by Mojang Studios prior to Microsoft's acquisition of the company in 2014.
  • Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, and Doom were owned by ZeniMax Media (by way of Bethesda Studios) prior to Microsoft's acquisition of the company in 2021.
    • Additionally, Fallout was originally owned by Interplay Entertainment before selling the IP to Bethesda Studios, while Doom was originally solely owned by id Software prior to Bethesda's acquisition of the company in 2009.
• Microsoft is the third third-party company to be introduced to the Super Smash Bros. series as DLC in the form of playable fighters, the first two being Square Enix and Atlus.
• Microsoft is the first major non-Japanese third-party company to be represented to the Super Smash Bros. series, followed by Disney.
• During the Mr. Sakurai Presents for Banjo & Kazooie, Masahiro Sakurai recommended that players play the original Banjo-Kazooie titles on the Xbox One, the mention of which caused the word "Xbox" to be the number one trending topic on Twitter in Japan, due to the console's infamously poor performance in the country.
• Prior to competing with Nintendo, in Microsoft's Encarta Encyclopedia, the image in the Video Games article depicts a family playing Mario Paint, and is even credited as having been provided by Nintendo of America.
• Microsoft is the first of two third-party companies to have more than one DLC fighter in Ultimate (Banjo & Kazooie and Steve), with the second being Square Enix (Hero and Sephiroth).
  • Square Enix also precedes Microsoft in having multiple major universes that all debuted in the Super Smash Bros. series through DLC (Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest from the former, and Banjo-Kazooie and Minecraft from the latter).

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Microsoft. The list of authors can be seen in their page's history. As with SmashWiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.