Microsoft

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Microsoft
Type	Public
Founded	April 4, 1975
Headquarters	Redmond, Washington
Key people	John W. Thompson Brad Smith Satya Nadella Bill Gates Phil Spencer
Industry	Technology
Products	Computers, Software, Video Games
Employees	134,944 (2018)
Website	https://www.microsoft.com/

Microsoft Corporation is an American technology company founded on April 4, 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It is best known for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. 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 such as Halo, Gears of War, Forza, and Minecraft in addition to smaller indie titles such as Super Lucky's Tale and Ori and the Blind Forest.

On September 24th, 2002, Microsoft purchased Rare from Nintendo, 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.

History

Computer Business

Before Microsoft, both creators, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, originally started a company (along with a third founder, Paul Gilbert) called Traf-O-Data. However, a few years later Microsoft will be found by the former two, with both having the desire in starting a business in technology, mainly computers. The creation of MS-DOS will be the product that will put the company into popularity, and the program will later be used on the IBM Personal Computer. On November 20th, 1985, they will release an extension to MS-DOS called Microsoft Windows which will later be updated to more advanced versions.

Console Business

The company will later become a main competitor in the video game business, releasing their first console, the Xbox in 2001 for North America and 2002 for other territories. It was the first gaming console released by an American company since the Atari Jaguar discontinued in 1996. The console had its own online service called Xbox Live, and will be known as the console which kickstarted the popularity of online play.

In 2005, the successor to the original Xbox, Xbox 360, will be released. It was in planning stages only a year after the Xbox was released. It was quickly developed in order to be the first video game console in the seventh generation. This strategy will successfully gain the company a large amount of market share in the first year of the console, but due to them releasing consoles in a rushed fashion, many Xbox 360 consoles will become faulty with many either overheating, scratching discs, or having the infamous "Red Ring of Death". This will force Microsoft to repair previous consoles and create new Xbox 360 models that will fix the previous issues of the first version.

Microsoft is still in the gaming console market, with its competitors being Nintendo and Sony. Their most recent console is the Xbox One and are currently working on Project Scarlett as the next console in the Xbox brand.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Microsoft owns Rare Ltd., the company that created Banjo & Kazooie, and the universe appears in Ultimate as DLC on September 4, 2019.

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 to compete with Nintendo at any point in its history, following Sega and before SNK, although Sega and SNK stopped making consoles prior to providing content for Super Smash Bros.
• Microsoft is the third third-party company to be introduced to the Super Smash Bros. series as DLC, the first two being Square Enix and Atlus.
• Microsoft is the first major Western third-party company to be introduced to the Super Smash Bros. series.
• As Microsoft is primarily a computer company with a video game division (Xbox Game Studios), it is the first company represented in the Super Smash Bros. series to not be a dedicated video game company.
• During the video presentation for Banjo & Kazooie, Sakurai mentioned that players should play the original games on Xbox, the mention of which caused the word "Xbox" to be the number one trending topic on Twitter in Japan. This was noteworthy, as the Xbox infamously had a difficult presence in Japan, and fans joked that Sakurai was able to do what Microsoft couldn't in 19 years.

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.