Jesus, so much for their "competition" angle.

Capitalism working its magic of course. Growth is essentially mandatory so even a trillion dollar company leading several industries is never gonna have "enough".

Needless to say I hope it never comes to pass, both for Nintendo and Valve. What the industry needs is not less players.

of course, my previous concerns about further consolidation within the industry are not too much of a fantasy. greed and corporate laziness are the name of the game, as always. and seeing people continue to root for monopolization and capitalism... so weird.

If this ever were to happen, I'd know then that this is the darkest, most terrible timeline, and we should commit to being evil.

Less AAA and more live service from both Nintendo and Sony. Kind of the worst possible future, at least an Xbox and Nintendo merge could have some merrits.

Why would Sony do less AAA if they merged with Nintendo? 

Because why spend millions upon millions of dollars on games when games like Super Mario, Mario Kart, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, Zelda, Smash Bros. etc. basically outsell all Sony games. Would not make sense business wise. Im sure they would still make some at first, but they would probably bank more on the cheaper games that sell more for the same price as their AAA games.

Because PlayStation first party games are still profitable without needing to outsell Nintendo first party games, and can be further used to grow their subscription service, and transmedia efforts.

Well Sony would be co owners of Nintendo games. They would focus on their biggest sellers. Like they are doing now. Im sure Sly, Jak & Daxter, Parappa The Rapper, Resistance, InFamous etc were all profitable, but not as much as God Of War, Gran Turismo, Ratchet & Clank, Spider-Man etc.

Okay,

1st) I agree that Microsoft buying Nintendo would be bad for the industry over all (we need more competition, not less) and I 100% DO NOT want that to happen.

2nd) Looking at the phrase "Nintendo future exists off their own hardware" on a vacuum, one has to wonder: How much would Zelda, Mario Kart 8 and Pókemon sell if they released on all of the other platforms? I mean, I think Pókemon alone might be able to rival GTA. Then again, I guess someone could argue that the tribalism that makes some fans rally around the brand might disappear and they would no longer have the same level of interest for those games, but still.

Yet PlayStation is abandoning their AAA games that costs 200 million euro to develop for live service games. So whilst they are profitable, they are not profitable enough for Sony. Nintendo games not only outsell PlayStation games, they probably also don't cost 200 million euro to make.