No offence guys, but I'm more confused than when I started this thread! Everyone seems to have a different theory :-s

I guess te basic idea is that there's at least a bit more to it than just a nice relashionship.

Well Nintendo owns stock in them but they also own a lot of stock in Silicon Knights and we know they don't develop exclusively for Nintendo. From what I know, it is just a partnership. However, I'm pretty sure Nintendo wears the pants in that partnership. Meaning Ninty decides the projects and they fund them. As for creative freedom within that, don't think they try to stop that although knowing Nintendo they definitely have the final say before it goes gold.

Other than that I'm really not sure about anything else. I'm pretty sure though that Ninty doesn't completely own either.  I believe HAL is a partnership but due to Iwata's ties with the company, it's a very strong partnership that probably won't be broken. Not to mention Nintendo has already given its head, Sakurai, large funding and his own team to create an exciting project called Project Sora.

From my research Hal is considered a sattelite development team meaning while Nintendo doesn't outright own them they do partially fund the company and have considerable influence on their actions as they own a nice chunk of their stock .

Game freak on the other hand just has agreement with Nintendo that guarantees them rights to develop pokemon games for Nintendo handheld exclusively..They are completely self sufficient...But Nintendo does owns some of their stock

Thanks Zucas, Exblackman and Bamboleo. I feel those were the most enlightening answers.

Hm, I always thought they were 2nd parties.

wait so is Resistance a sony ip or is it Insomniac's ip that they can put on other systems