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.

*sighs*

Won't happen. Will not happen. Cannot happen.

As for the idea... it's fanciful. Microsoft and Nintendo have completely different philosophies as companies. Their direction (in the market they are aiming at) is the opposite.

Like Rol has once said, "when one mixes food and poison together the poison will always win out" but in this case both nintendo and to a lesser extent, microsoft are poison. Mixing poison with poison only produces a more vile poison.

This doesn't preclude either company from going in their different directions during that platform generation.

For isntance, Nintendo could offer a console without Kinect or TV integration (Xbox One Guide).  They could offer their own Game Store with only their games or games developed for their console and games developed for the MXO platform.   

Again, what Microsoft offers them is everything they don't have.  An OS, as well as a mature and solid development platform and online service.  Likewise, Nintendo offers them the one thing Microsoft doesn't have, a handheld gaming platform.   Nintendo can, rather than focus on building the things it doesn't have, have instant access to them.

And that is good! You want to poison the competition! Poisonous food is good to poison your competition but it's slow in it's execution.

How are either poison to each other?

Both have capabilities that the other doesn't possess.

Paraphrasing Rol without any context to what it means to this conversation is meaningless. 

All Microsoft care about is shooters. Nintendo are all about platformers, kart racers and adventure games. They have "conflicting" interests. How will they "share" the spoils? It just wouldn't work.

Except this time it's nintendo and microsoft are the ones who's taking it. ^_^

YAY! That makes me happy!

Combining bad performance will only create a more catastrophic performance. The fact that microsoft didn't learn what was so successful about the xbox 360 makes me realize they need some more pain and losses to learn their lesson. The fact that nintendo created a worse than gamecube console aside from virtual boy just shows you that nintendo does not know to expand the market. Putting both of them together won't do anything and instead will only hurt them more.