Maybe, but Sony's greatest asset is Japan Studio, not a "Western" studio.

If Nintendo wants to expand and work on new genres that's fine with me but, in my mind, it's more important to make great games and less important to make a game oriented around a "Western" or "Eastern" audience, whatever that is. Obviously paying attention to common denominators is a good recipe for financial success, but I'd rather Nintendo stick to its design philosophy and succeed or fail accordingly.

Also, it's incorrect to refer to the West, or East for that matter, as a monolith. There are thousands of cultural, political, and economic realities and communities in each sphere.

they should give NOE and NOA more cash and let them get their own studios or 2nd party studios.

NOE could buy Shin'en. they know how to make games for the wii u, and they could grow with some extra money.
thats a cheap move, and the could braindrain crytek (working for crytek isnt so goo i heared)

Next Level is working exclusively with Nintendo nowadays, but point taken.

Hmm... Nintendo's main weakness in terms of genres are shooters of any sort, WRPG's, and to a limited extent, sports games. The last wouldn't be a problem if EA could tolerate Nintendo, but as it stands, there's been little to no sports games since launch for the Wii U.

Retro could keep on doing Donkey Kong forever as far as I'm concerned, simply because they're good at it, but I think they have the skill to tackle another genre.

Some sort of shooter could be made by any number of studios, but perhaps Nintendo could make a new studio for this genre? I've heard too many horror stories about people leaving EA, Activision, and Sony to believe they can't find enough talent lying around.

A WRPG series could be made by an existing studio. Buying an existing studio like Obsidian would be a coup here.

Next Level recently made Luigi's Mansion 2, but maybe they should go back to making Mario-themed sports games.

I think Generic-User-1 makes the best point here. NOA and NOE need to be given a pot of money each that they can use to buy up studios, commission games, etc without the go ahead from Nintendo Japan.

We all know the amount of cash Nintendo has to hand. They could without breaking a sweat, give NOA and NOE a couple of hundred million $; enough to each bring a handful of games to market.

Of course they do. They should have 2+ more studios in the US or Canada and 2+ more in Europe. They need games in the cinematic adventure, shooter, realistic racer and other genres. It would really compliment the Mario, Zelda, Monolith, etc teams they have right now. If you were to add an exclusive contract with Mistwalker, they would essentially not need 3rd party support to have a truly thriving system.

The Big Red Button suggestion is great. If I ran Nintendo, I would also pursue partial ownership or partnerships with Edge of Reality (former Turok designers, good at shooters), Turtle Rock Studios, Slightly Mad Studios and possibly try to purchase Crytek UK from Crytek (former Rare devs). I would give them all freedom to create new IPs, preferably to western tastes with strong graphics and online. The whole acquisition could potentially be done for about 500 million and would make Nintendo by far the largest and most versatile publisher in the world. If Mistwalker and Platinum games were contracted exclusively to make action titles and rpgs, respectively, the software flow would be incredible.

The lack of branded sports games is a good point, actually.  There are a great many people who think of games with the NBA, FIFA, MLB, or NFL brand as being essential.  There is no getting around that.

IF Nintendo wants to compete with Sony and Microsoft directly, they need to get third parties on their system.  In order to do that, they would probably need to develop a broader market.  Games like Bayonetta and Hyrule Warriors are certainly a start but they need more than that.  They need to cultivate diversity the same way Sony has, where having a large variety of games helps your console even if each individual game is not a million seller.  

Nintendo's plan going forward, assuming that's the route they wish to take--which they need to be working on RIGHT NOW--should be to diversify their offerings and to form offices in North America and Europe which will work to improve developer relationships across the board.

However, I somehow get the feeling that any improvement in either area will be marginal for next gen and we'll be having these same conversations again in a few years.

I'll say it once, and I'll say it 1000 times again.

Nintendo needs to bring back Turok!!!

Imagine the parkour mechanics of Titanfall with the platforming aspects the original Turok had. Add in more vehicles. And the ability to take control of dinosaurs. And maybe some God of War like finishing moves with a blade/bow combo.

The biggest issue, of course, is that Latin and South America, Asia (particularly India and China) and the Middle East, are all potentially huge markets, each dwarfing Europe and possibly the USA.

Any of the big 3 console manufacturers should be looking to invest in those markets, and develop games and systems that appeal to them.

Nintendo especially, with their philosophy of reusing older technologies in new ways, should be looking to leverage Wii technology, perhaps upscaled to HD in those emerging markets; creating new studios in those countries, making the games that those consumers would want to buy.

China is the obvious, but India also has a rapidly growing middle class, and as a country India is also much more open to capitalism than China is [citation needed].

Plus those games could be sold elsewhere. I don't know about anybody else, but I would certainly be interested in playing games created by the Indian culture, or the Brazilian, or the Chinese, or even the Middle East (provided it was kept secular, Abrahamic Religions are terrifying)

I'm not opposed to greater variety in their output...
As long as it doesn't affect their current developers and projects...

I miss Turok :(

I loved the original, Seeds of Evil, Rage Wars, and, to a lesser extent, Shadow of Oblivion. It all went to hell after that unfortunately. It would be great if the franchise experienced a renaissance.