"While Nintendo is protective of its franchises, Mario + Rabbids creative director Davide Soliani has found the company is "quite open-minded" to new ideas as long as the creative concept can be justified. When Ubisoft Milan set out to make a Mario-Rabbids crossover game, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto tasked the team with making a game that wasn't about Mario jumping. The studio embraced that challenge by proposing a game where Mario and his pals use guns.

            " Soliani noted that while it was "not an easy topic" address, Miyamoto embraced their concept the first time they presented it because the team could back it up with a compelling vision that worked within the Mario world. "Every time you are proposing something crazy to Nintendo, they are quite open-minded, but you need a good justification and a good logic to create something in the Mario universe," he explained."

            I wonder what crazy crossover are we going to get next from Nintendo and Ubisoft, Zelda- Assassin's Creed perhaps?

           Source:  http://uk.ign.com/articles/2017/09/01/nintendo-quite-open-minded-to-new-creative-ideas-says-mario-rabbids-creative-director?abthid=59a8f9f12ba7cd433100003d

That is good to hear, you have to be realistic but still can be a bit open minded in concepts being given to you.

They're sitting on a goldmine of IP, hopefully they outsource more of that lesser loved IP to other studios they trust to bolster the Switch lineup.

Yeah, as long as it's exclusive to their platform and they have full creative control...

I want a GTA + Animal Crossing.

Mario x Rabbids was developed internally at Ubisoft, so I'm not sure what you mean by creative control.

And why wouldn't it be exclusive to their platform?

As long as Sheik is the assassin I'm on board.

You mean like... every console manufacturer ever?

And they didn't have creative control. 

I said years ago that Nintendo really needed to break out of doing the same formula with their core offerings every generation and, honestly, though it took them long enough, they're doing a pretty good job of that.

Splatoon has been the big winner, obviously, but you have to be prepared to accept failures along the way and not let that stop you. Mario + Rabbids looks like another winner. ARMS, maybe not, but the risks are worthwhile.

That's a TPS, an XCOM-style tactics game, and a fighter--what's next?

Arms still did relatively good for a new fighting ip.