As we all know, Nintendo have a number of partnerships with independent third party developers (not indies) going on right now. The two most notable, here, being Platinum Games and Valhalla Game Studios.
The interesting thing, in my opinion, about these two developers in particular is that the types of games they make are very different from any of Nintendo's usual games. In this, they bear some resemblance to Monolith Soft, makers of the Xenoblade games.
In 2006, Nintendo published Baten Kaitos Origins, despite the original Baten Kaitos being published by Namco. Nintendo were clearly already interested in the company. They were, in 2006, also working on a new game Disaster: Day of Crisis, for release on Wii. It wasn't until 2007 that Nintendo bought a controlling share of the developer from Bandai Namco.
Consider the similarity to Platinum, here. Nintendo publishing a sequel to a game published by another company, whlie the studio also developed a new game in a new franchise for Nintendo. Much of the studio's games are of a kind that Nintendo isn't particularly known for, and even if some of their games haven't been all that stellar, the studio is still highly-regarded by the industry.
Valhalla Game Studios is a slightly different situation, of course. Itagaki was known for games like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, but he left Tecmo and sued them. Devil's Third is his first game since then, and it's been in somewhat of a development limbo, but Nintendo picked it up and it seems to be nearing completion. But the curious thing is that Nintendo apparently approached Itagaki, not the other way around, after THQ dropped their publishing deal with Valhalla (due to lack of necessary funds to support development, this was prior to THQ collapsing).
Nintendo has recently commented that they are actively looking for acquisitions and mergers. Could their current arrangements be a hint as to which companies they are looking at? Are Platinum and Valhalla two studios that Nintendo are considering bringing into the fold, to round out their lineup of developers/IPs?
And which other developers do you think Nintendo might be specifically looking at? Keep in mind, this thread is about developers, not publishers. Capcom and Crytek are huge potential buyouts, but they aren't development studios, they're big companies with multiple studios. And while I do think Capcom (or Sega, if they can) would be great purchases for Nintendo, those are examples of massive purchases that would change the entire industry landscape, whereas I'm talking about smaller purchases that are simply about improving Nintendo themselves.
