I didn't say otherwise. In fact, I stated that they ably supply two.

I'm not following.

He means Nintendo also makes handhelds, which Bioware dabbled in with that Sonic RPG.

And Nintendo doesn't really buy a whole lot of companies. Before their acquisition of NDCube late last year (which they already owned majority stocks in), the last company they purchased was Monolith back in 200...6, I believe?

But that's what I'd said. Not sure what's being contested here. Perhaps just a misunderstanding.

Edit: I think I now understand his meaning. However, what I'd meant was that they would be developing consoles only (handhelds are consoles) and no longer PC.

That might be up in the air. It depends on whatever deal might be made.

I suppose it'd have to be. EA's efforts on the PC are both numerous and, in some cases, extremely profitable (namely The Sims)

Certainly would be an interesting occurence

They moved to full ownership of Game Freak sometime after that, but that was again a company they had more or less had a lock on.

Nintendo doesn't poach companies from out of the blue. That's what they really haven't done. Retro Studios is the closest example, and Retro had targeted itself for GameCube development (albeit independently) before that point

I'd say they need to poach Keiji Inafune and the staff who were part of Flagship, then put them to work on "New" Metroid and "New" Zelda. I fucking loved Capcom's Zelda titles.

Also, I hope they're doing something about Cing, because I want more Ashley Robins and Kyle Hyde adventures, too.

I highly doubt Nintendo would force companies like Bioware, Maxis and DICE to develop for consoles only.  They find the most success on PC, and Nintendo probably wouldn't change that in order to allow for more profit.  However, its also precisely for this reason that I don't think Nintendo would buy EA.

Remember, Nintendo had deals with Maxis in the past.  They even remade games like Sim City, Sim Ant and Sim City 2000 for the SNES.  And that's the extent I think Nintendo would work with a company that focuses on PC games.  Just ports to consoles.

It does bring up an interesting point however.  What if Nintendo purchased a company that focuses on PC games, just for the profit.

Also, to my knowledge, Nintendo hasn't bought that many companies.  Most companies are second parties, like Camelot, Monolith, Game Freak and Genius Sonority (eww....Pokemon Battle Revolution...).  Interestingly enough, Treasure is also considered a second party for Nintendo, while making plenty of PSP games.  The few first parties, aside from EAD and the R&D departments, are Intelligent Systems, Brownie Brown, Retro Studios, HAL Lab and Project Sora.

Another interesting point, with Brownie Brown and Monolith, that's two distinct groups that broke off from Square Enix that later made games for Nintendo.  But I'm curious why Brownie Brown is considered a first party, as they still work on games with SquareEnix.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo#Second-party_studios

Its virtualy impossible for Nintendo to aquire Rare back. They would have to buy it at a much higher price than they sold it. Plus most of original staff have long been gone so these new guys wouldn't be interested in joining Nintendo.

Plus they're not worth it.