The exact relationship between Nintendo and the various divisions that develop games for its consoles confuses me. I know that the EADs and Intelligent Systems are completely internal and 1st Party and I've always thought or Retro Studios as a 2nd party, owned studio analogous to Rare in the 90s.

But I don't understand the nature of Nintendo's relationship with Gamefreak or HAL. Can someone clear this up for me?

Game Freak and HAL are both second parties.

Nintendo's first party studios are Intelligent Systems, NST, Brownie Brown, Monolith Soft and Project Sora and Retro Studios.

I forgot what's the relation with 2nd party? just that they are exclusive for the console?

Basically yes.. They generally behave as a first party studio but the difference is that second parties are not owned by the console manufacturer where as first party studios are majority owned by the console manufacturer.

don't gamefreaks do the pokemon stuff? isn't the the whole pokemon brand owned by nintendo though? (since you're answering questions, I just ask =D )

http://www.pokemon.com/

Down the bottom it says Game Freak/Creatures Inc/Pokemon and Pokemon Characters are all trademarks of Nintendo.

Edit: For all Nintendo first and second parties and an explanation, go here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nintendo_developers

thanks Iwata!

So does that mean that Rare were Nintendo first party? I always thought of them as 2nd party.

No you thought right, Rare was second party, 49% owned by Nintendo before being sold off to Microsoft.

2nd parties aren't owned by the console maker,but they have a contract with them to make games only for their console.