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Microsoft

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Microsoft
Microsoft logo.svg
Type Public
Founded April 4, 1975
Headquarters USA 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.

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.


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