So, we all know that Vigil Games still doesn't have a buyer. Some have suggested that Nintendo should buy them, along with the Darksiders IP. Others have argued that Nintendo doesn't need another game resembling Zelda, and that Vigil Games wouldn't be a good choice for Nintendo.
Which leads me to this question: If Nintendo were going to buy another studio, which one should they pick, and why, and how?
The "how" is there to keep people from answering "Bungie, because Nintendo could release a Halo game" or "Bungie, to make a Halo Killer", despite the fact that Bungie is in a deal with Activision, that they're closely tied to Microsoft even after becoming independent, and that they obviously aren't in any rush to be owned again.
So, my answer is actually High Voltage Software. They are an independent studio, they are highly active, they have good experience with Nintendo hardware, and they've developed an engine for the Wii that goes beyond anything that any other developer, Nintendo included, has been able to do with it. They are likely working on a comparable upgrade to their HD engine, to make it work well for the Wii U.
But when it comes to game design itself, they are somewhat lacking. More importantly, they suck at the artistic side of graphics, resulting in games that, while technically great in the graphics department, look horrible. To me, these are the very things that Nintendo would be able to bring to the studio - their experience with artistic quality and the subtleties of game development.
So what does Nintendo get out of it? They get a studio that can develop an in-house engine that they would be able to then offer to third-parties who are making exclusives, as well as making their own games with it. They would also get a developer with experience with FPS games, a franchise that has the potential to become highly popular with Nintendo putting its spin on it (The Conduit), they would be further expanding their western development, and they'd get a subsidiary studio that specialises in motion capture and related technologies (Red Eye Studios). And the studio must have been quite profitable over time, as they've been around for 19 or so years, and managed to fully fund The Conduit's development out of their own pockets (Sega was only the distributing publisher, they didn't fund development at all).
In some ways, HVS reminds me of Bungie, which was a studio that had made a variety of games, but didn't really hit it big until they created Halo and Microsoft bought them out (fun fact: Halo was originally going to be for Mac and Windows, and Steve Jobs announced that it would release on the two platforms simultaneously... then MS bought them out).
In short, I see HVS as being a good match for Nintendo, because they each have particular expertise in the things that the other one doesn't, and HVS would fill a hole in Nintendo's lineup.
