I thought of that too. To be fair, Ubisoft Montreal probably has more employees than all of the EAD studios combined, and I doubt the teams making Child of Light and Ass Creed Unity had any more common devs than those making Mario Kart 8 and Captain Toad.
I don't know what Rare or Naughty Dog have to do with this. The former hasn't made a Nintendo game in a long time and the latter didn't release a new game last year. Maybe DKC:TF, Bayonetta, Smash, etc weren't even factors in Nintendo's win. Maybe it was just because they released a few great games that actually worked.
But the truth is probably that most journalists see "Super Smash Bros" and associate it with Nintendo, and simply can't be bothered to differentiate between Nintendo as a publisher and Nintendo as a developer.
