Ex-Microsoft "enforcer" Joachim Kempin is back again with another wacky behind-the-scenes story of his days at Bill Gates's side. This time he's saying that MS considered buying Sega in an attempt to take a stab at Sony, but ultimately Bill Gates nixed the whole thing, saying that Sega lacked "the muscle" to have any siginificant impact.

"There were three companies at that point in time, I think this was Sony, Sega, and Nintendo," Kempin said. "There was always talk maybe we buy Sega or something like that. That never materialized."

Instead, they went the licensing route for the Dreamcast.

"We were actually able to license them what they call Windows CE, the younger brother of Windows, to run on their system and make that their platform."

"But for Bill [Gates] this wasn't enough, he didn't think Sega had enough muscle to eventually stop Sony so we did our own Xbox thing," Kempin said.

"There were some talks but it never materialized because Sega was a very different bird. It was always Sony and Nintendo, right? And Nintendo had some financial trouble at some point in time, so Sony came out with the PlayStation and bang! - they took off and everyone else was left behind."

[Via IGN]

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