Nintendo should definitely make sure to maintain a good number of developers, and continue to use their other studios for good purpose.

Because 7/8 were Kinect Studios which MS no longer are pushing for, Gamers made there choices saying they didnt want Kinect so whats the point in owning Kinect Studios?

As for Lion Head, they had there time in the sun and have failed to live up to Fable 1 and 2 which was more then 8 years ago. Why hold on to them if all there doing is draining your salary for your brand.

You cant exactly let a Kinect Studio go independent. Where are they going to go? Closing a studio doesnt mean theres nothing left. The workers behind the studios are the blood and soul of a company. They have most likely kept the good devs and absorb them into MS Studios like they did with Esemble Studios after Halo Wars.

Also look at the benefits. Clearly room in your budget allows for more investment into bigger titles, Allowing more room for other companies to slot right in and having more focus on projects. MS had over 22 Studios before they closed down 8. Where did that take them? No where. So why keep them?

The IPs still remain under MS property. Another company will take up Fable just like Killer Instinct.

As for the OP. Going PC is not a bad thing, especially for Xbox. They will gain more income though software sales and probably gain more benefits from MS for helping sell Win10. Xbox is just hardware, they lose money on selling hardware, they gain heaps on Xbox Live Members and Software.

Not much will change... Sony may end up having less competition and Nintendo have more breathing space.

I hope Nintendo NX will be really a good thing, because I dont want Sony monopol in console business..
Microsoft ? They will compete with Steam, and will try to push W10.

I'm sure Nintendo would benefit if Microsoft stopped making consoles. Thats basically a quarter of the market up for grabs.

Microsoft woukd benefit from beeing in a different type of business.

This is like the phone market for games. It is big, it is growing, but it doesn't replace the console market. 

I don't think PC's or tablets have the capability of replacing consoles. As for streaming services, they are always sub-optimal. 

So, i do think Microsoft has a logical market there, but its going to be difficult to hold both that and the home console market.

You are thinking now, I'm thinking 5 to 10 years in the future. Things are changing quite fast, and dedicated gaming consoles are going to be something of the past.

I'm not saying I want it to be, but that's just how it's going to be.

Well apparently MS have a really bad track record with free 2 play games.

So for MS f2p games dont work. Maybe nintendo will do better for their mobile phone games? hard to do worse than MS in that reguard.

I think good games work, sold at a price of less than 60$.

Not if enough people dont want it that way.

Just gotta keep buying consoles, and they wont go anywhere.

Im pretty sure the first to kill off their console, in favor of a service you stream, is in for a flop & loss of profits on it.

Time will tell.

We won't have a choice. Manufacturers just want to get rid of the 399$ price of admission. They don't make money on the systems because they have to sell them for cheap. They make more money in the content they sell for the system. That's why  they are constantly trying to get rid of it. One day they will find a way to do it. That's all I'm saying.

I don't know when it will happen, but it will definitely happen