What if Microsoft and Nintendo partnered?
Wait. Don't leave just yet. Listen up.
What if Microsoft licensed the Xbox One hardware, OS, and Xbox LIVE service to Nintendo for Nintendo to customize and produce is own Xbox compatible console? Instantly, overnight, Nintendo would have a powerful OS with every desirable capability including Kinect voice and gesture controls, a solid, mature online service to integrate with, a powerful and mature development platform to build games and software with, and the ability to provide its own unique hardware, features, and services. Nintendo would still be able to innovate and bring unique hardware and software experiences to gaming. It's just those hardware and software experience could also be platform experiences too if they desired.
Likewise, in Japan, Microsoft could comfortably give up the Japanese market and instead dedicate its resources there to creating software experiences for the Nintendo console.
Because Nintendo wasn't spending money on developing home console hardware, it could align its resources to software as well as handheld hardware and software. As an added bonus, it would have built-in third party support.
What's the trade-off? The trade-off would be that Nintendo build its mobile gaming platform on the Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8.1 OS. Once again, it would be able to offer its own customized UI and create unique software experiences, but as well those experience could be available to regular Windows Phone 8 or Windows 8.1 users as well.
So, lets assume the next Nintendo handheld gaming platform is an gaming system integrated with a mobile phone. Nintendo would be responsible for developing the hardware for that platform, with Microsoft help if necessary, but it would be the basis for a gaming and mobile platform. Not just Nintendo's, but one shared by Microsoft and Nintendo.
The split duties exercise each companies own strength. Microsoft on the home console, software, and services side of things, and Nintendo with hardware innovation, first-party games, and handheld gaming.
So, tell me how this is a bad idea.
