I know exactly what I would do with Nintendo's resources.  I'd take a huge, expensive risk, that would either completely flop, or pay off in spades.

I'd make the Virtual Boy Advance. 

Nintendo doesn't want to merge with anyone, especially stupid American movie companies. Who wants a movie producer in charge of nintendo games?? Not me.

Nintendo knows they are in an innovation race. If they cannot keep coming up with incredible ideas (DS/Wii) then eventually sony and microsoft will pay someone to come up with better ideas or steal Nintendo's ideas. Nintendo now realizes that they need to focus on constantly expanding the market, through whatever means necessary.

Well, on the matter of them suing I'll give you something to chew on.  The first person to ever steal from Apple was Bill Gates who turned around and made Windows with it (though, funnily enough, Apple stole the ideas of the graphical user interface and mouse from Xerox in the first place, so they couldn't do crap).  Apple has plenty of good reasons to not let what they know get out.

KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid.

That's it. That's all you need to know to be really successful.

In-N-Out is a fast food chain started in the 40's out of California. They just opened up thier 1st resteraunt here in Tucson and for the last week the walk-in and drive thru lines have been atleast an hour wait. Why? KISS. They make great burgers. Nothing else. No nuggets, chicken crap, happy meals, toys, nothing buy basic burgers. Either a single or a double, with or without cheese. 

Nintendo is the same, sort of. They will not, nor would I as CEO venture into non-gaming environments. They excel at making games and the DS/Wii just prove that point. Sony/MS are huge and do a lot of other things. That is why both of thier systems are profit losers right now. MS has never made money on the xbox and Sony will have to a few years to do so again. Whereas, with Nintendo sticking to games and only focusing on that business they have always and will continue to be a profitable company. Sometimes better than others.

I for one would not change a thing. Thier entire Blueocean philosophy is a perfect idea and really the only viable option for a company who's only income comes from games. If they were to pull out of the industry it would be really bad as MS/Sony could easily cut out and continue on with their other successful ventures. They don't really care about games or the game industry, just about building a larger force to bring in their revenues. Like Wal-mart when it started selling food. It immediatly added millions in year-end income because they added a new section to their already massive stores.

lol @ virtual boy advance. To be honest, I think that with some better motion sensitivity, it could work. If I were nintendo, I'd really start doing some secret research into motion sensitivity. The wii remote is fun, but it's not really capable of doing the whole "sword fighting" thing we all want. Improve motion sensitivity, cross wii remote with virtual boy style helmet (which isn't massivly heavy and doesn't hurt the eyes) and you have a real winner there. Just be difficult to get over the stigma.

Also, I would stop neglecting the Europe market. Put some effort there. Buy up some European devs with good potential, stop ripping them off with prices and release dates, etc. While Nintendo rules Japan and does very well in North America, the rest of the world is lacking. If they secure the Europe market, then the Wii would be king.

also, drop the price of VC games. Honestly, if they were half the price I'd buy twice as much.

Lastly, fix the broken online system. Keep it kid safe, but replace friend codes with names and have a system wide list (or at least, an easy way to transfer from system wide list to local list) 

Nintendo has proven, with the Wii that people are looking for a new gaming experience and are willing to try something new.  I am certainly a believer in gameplay over graphics, but both would have been great.  You have to admit that graphically, there are some games on the 360 (and PS3) that are jaw-dropping.

Assuming I was in charge at Nintendo, I would already working on Wii2 that would push the graphics engine closer to where the 360/ps3 are at now and be working on a faster and more responsive wii controller.  By maintaining 100% backward compatibility and only adding new features and horsepower, a newer Wii could be brought out within 3 years or so at which time the graphics chips and cpus will be cheaper and the HD race in terms of screen resolution and format will have, for the most part, been decided.

I'd also spend some of the current income stream on developing some new IP.  Mario et. al. are getting a bit stale. 

Agree.

Nintendo don't need to change their gameplan - but both Sony & MS do.

I think the key for Nintendo is *not* be sucked in by the allure of massive profits, and keep innovating as they have been over the last 20+ years. I'm sure they are working on some pretty cool new ideas - both software & hardware-wise.

I would like to see them forge closer ties with a few more developers (keeping them 3rd-party, while having access to their development resources), and maybe consider a few more buy-outs (or even some larger ones). And gradually opening up a few more retail stores (i.e. Nintendo World stores - at least a couple in each country). There is a large profit margin on units sold at retail, and they can leverage off these stores for marketing and promotional purposes as well (i.e. run they solely from the huge marketing budget).

I believe that as digital distribution starts to take off, Nintendo's profit will continue to soar. They are well placed to take advantage of that market (small game ROM/data sizes, huge back catalog). 

I also wouldn't mind to see them partner with a mobile phone developer, to potentially release a GBA enabled mobile. The key would be making it fully backwards compatible, so no (new) game development was needed.

I wonder how difficult it would be to make "3D" games on the TV screen the same way they do with 3d movies, ie the red/blue 3d glasses.  Probably too gimmicky though.  Thus why I'm not the CEO. :p

@superchunk Thanks for getting me all hungry. Now I want a Double Double. If I was the CEO of Nintendo, I would have to try to move into the Playboy Mansion and take over Hef's place. And then me and Holly would be doing this:

I would also like to see Nintendo collaborate with other companies, especially one that made MP3 players, as I'm sure you could combine a Gameboy Micro, with say, a iPod video, but then I suppose it would be too similar as the PSP. However, if they did collaborate with Apple, then they could bring out their games on Macs, so people who are more into PC gaming would be able to play Mario, Zelda etc with a keyboard and mouse setup, this would be especially useful for FPS.

 Also I would bring out some driving games, as in something better than Excite Truck, and more of the calibre of GT4.