Honestly I dont even think MS can touch Nintendo like the way it did Sony. MS was able to buy the loyalty away from Sony and its relationship with it's 3rd parties (which were its strength's as well as their Awesome First Party) Nintendo has made Billions of dollars off of their First Parties. Its become funny enough that 3rd parties have a hard time excelling on the Wii. Mario, Metroid, Wario, No More Heroes, Smash Bros, Wii Fit, Wii Sports MS cant even hope to touch those franchises....to me it seems that Sony and Nintendo like to encourage Create and build franchises from the ground up and make them successful or do the same with established franchises (Final Fantasy, MGS, DMC, RARE) and MS likes to just buy them

Microsoft alrdy tried to buyout nintendo once and btw nintendo probably not worried about having microsoft as an enemy. microsoft might have more money but nintendo been around for over a 100+ years.

Microsoft is the perfect company to compete with Sony. They're not as good to compete with Nintendo, although they can try.

In the next generation, they could bet on evolving the Wii's philosophy, but the Wii is already doing it with WM+. Nintendo isn't making things easy for Microsoft either!

They already are:

"X-Box 360 now only $199"

Wii hasn't standard disk storage and has too little RAM for a lot of memory consuming PC tasks (for example multimedia and image manipulation, not simple showing and playying of them), so it can't fully replace a PC. Nintendo could, if it see it fit, make the next Wii2 a cheap and simple PC replacement, in 4-5 years a mid sized HDD should cost a fraction of the current price. But once expanded its already big user base, Nintendo could even find some way, some HW+SW add-on to change the Wii into a limited feature entertainment centre, focusing only on typical living room tasks, without trying the broader approach MS would like to try. And it would be a threat to MS anyway, as typical living room tasks are what most of the target users are almost exclusively interested in, a cheap Nintendo (but also Sony, had it succeeded) entertainment centre would force MS to rethink from scratch its much more costly approach, with a mid-range PC with Windows, more expensive than a console, to work as server, workstation for people liking more complex activities, and central coordinator of all other devices. Whichever manufacturer tries to make a console THE centre, deprives MS of its divine right to put there a Windows license. If Nintendo has such plans for Wii, for MS it's already too late.

I suspect it is too late for Microsoft to target Nintendo. It is happening the other way round.

If you look at the announcement of the Wii TV channel, it makes an odd reference to "Wii-ready TVs". This suggests to me that Nintendo are aiming to get Wii technology embedded into TV sets. (OK, I admit right now that this is rampant speculation on my part, but it is at least possible).

If this is true then:

a) it is something that neither MS nor Sony can do, as their kit - nice though it is - is too big and too noisy
b) it would strike right at the heart of Sony's home technology ambitions and MS's living-room ambitions
c) it would increase Nintendo's potential market way beyond anything that we have predicted here

This would be a hugely aggressive step by Nintendo in the market, but it would have every chance of coming off.

MS and Sony should be very worried.

Did anyone actually read the OP?

thekitchensink mentioned 4 PCesque things the wii can now do, that the GC couldn't

If Nintendo get in MS's way, then MS will attempt to bring down Nintendo. and to be honest, I would love to see them try. Nintendo distracts them, whilst Apple, Google, Mozilla, and the various Linux devs start stabbing at MS's back

"I suspect it is too late for Microsoft to target Nintendo"

How many people said in 2000:

"It's too late for Microsoft to target Sony"?

@scottie:

Apple wouldn't like it, but the best move for Nintendo, Sony, Google, Mozilla and Linux distros would be to join together to define a common platform for an OS-agnostic home computing and entertainment environment.

They can target wii any time they want even this generation.

All they need is casual friendly games with simplified controlers.