They don't NEED Golden Sun, although it would be nice to see it come back. Also Glory of Heracles, Mother/Earthbound, Wario Land, Hotel Dusk/Last Window, and a few other games to come back.

They NEED Brain Age, F-Zero, Sin & Punishment, Kid Icarus and the Nintendo/Advance/Battalion Wars series to make epic comebacks IMO.

They only NEED to keep making mario, pokemon, and zelda.

franchises they should bring back or continue more before golden sun should be f-zero (to fill in the racing hole), metroid (to fill in the fps hole), pikmin (wide appeal with fantastic puzzle and exploration features), kid icarus uprising (it could be Nintendo's family friendly god of war and its humorous tone/anime-like character designs can also allow for the ip to grow beyond gaming like pokemon), and mario strikers (both iterations have so far been very creative and it always sucks that everyone overlooks the fifa-less wii u during the world cup)

I'd like to see another Golden Sun game, but I don't really think it's a must..

Why exactly do they NEED these franchises if they've been doing fine without them for all this time?

As someone else said this is more of a you want rather than a they need. 

People are putting this whole "need " out of proportion and making it into a bigger thing than it is. Which is what most people on this site do anyways.

It's a slight exaggeration. Get. Over. It.

i dont know what they need.

but i NEED a new elite beat agents!

We need a new Mischief Makers.

Never even heard of Golden Sun before.

As much as I love Camelot (shining force is one of my favorite franchises of all time) golden sun was a pretty weak effort. It was basically a by numbers generic RPG series. Nintendo would be perfectly fine without it...

Now, if sega could get Camelot to make some new shining force games THAT would be amazing!

... oh, I understand. You mean in the sense of advising a golfer to "be the ball". Nintendo needs to "be" 3rd party, so that they better understand the 3rd parties.

That's what you meant, right? I mean, you're clearly not stupid enough to suggest that Nintendo would be better served by diluting their brand and depending on other companies for hardware that would therefore not be particularly suited to the way that they make games.

Anyway, I came in here hoping that this would be about third party franchises Nintendo should acquire, since Nintendo has apparently, recently, practically acquired the "Momotaru Dentetsu" franchise from Konami/Hudson. And since that's what I wanted the thread to be about, that's what I'll answer with.

Nintendo needs to get hold of Sonic. Sega clearly doesn't truly understand what to do with Sonic now, and I believe Nintendo would be able to do the Blue Blur justice.