A few months into the pandemic, when large parts of a bored, hunkered-down world were thinking about buying Animal Crossing: New Horizons, an excitable, expansionist Microsoft was thinking about buying the games maker, Nintendo.Nintendo? The unbuyable factory of whimsy? Asia’s mightiest exporter of soft power and Japan’s closely held Fort Knox of intellectual property? Madness. Well, perhaps. But madness of a type that might benefit Japan far more than it will admit. 

Japan should think about selling Nintendo as both intellectual experiment and shock therapy. Or at least admit why it definitely won’t. The more unthinkable such a sale might sound, and the more horrifying the prospect of relinquishing a crown jewel, the more valuable the whole thought process becomes for less flashy troves of corporate excellence.

Evidence of Microsoft’s interest in the endlessly fecund, Kyoto-based spawning ground of Super Mario, Zelda and Donkey Kong surfaced briefly last month when documents amassed as part of the US software giant’s legal fight with the Federal Trade Commission over the proposed $75bn purchase of Activision Blizzard leaked online.