Topic: Should Nintendo start buying third party studios?

I'm pretty sure Japanese companies can't be bought by Yankee companies is more of an exaggeration, Microsoft famously tried to buy Nintendo once for example. The laws are more for hostile takeovers rather than a company wanting it to happen. The bigger hurdle is not the legal side as there are ways lawyers can get around it like calling it a "merger" or setting up a Japanese subsidiary to be the parent company etc but a cultural one.

In any case I will repeat what I said earlier, Nintendo buying other companies is a dramatically under reacting to what other companies are doing. Instead of over spending on studios who would have to adapt to Nintendo's approach (keep in mind as weird as Japanese companies are, Nintendo are even weirder) so I'd rather see Nintendo pour billions into themselves, hire more code monkeys so games are developed quicker and promote the more talented younger staff to oversea new franchises like how Splatoon was developed and revive dormant IP even if that's not as exciting as Nintendo now owning a studio.

Yeah I would love to see that too. I heard Microsoft offered to buy Nintendo and they laughed at them and refused, didn’t know about anything on the legal side. The current market is catering to new and old school gamers like myself. I buy new games, but having enough high quality retro titles does have some pull. Sonys current annoyed backwards compatible game base shows the power of old IPs. While I agree it’s excellent for Nintendo to double down on themselves, it could also just be a case of all your eggs in one basket. If brands didn’t mean so much, people wouldn’t get Harley Davidson tattoos on their bodies. I still have nes games, who’s IPs I’ve played right up till now and still going strong. Final fantasy is a good example. Loosing Bethesda was a big move, as Skyrim was one of my all time favorite games, now with Nintendo I know we can’t get any other games from the elder scrolls games. Nintendo like to think of their games like toys, sometimes dooms or resident evil are good too. I can’t see Nintendo going their.

@jump Yeah you are right which is the reason for purchasing that additional land to build a second office block. Ideally they should have done this far sooner, because it’s gonna be a few years until it’s fully operational.

I wonder if Nintendo will start looking to build up more internal studios overseas in the future, with the Japanese population both shrinking and ageing and wages increasing at competitors to keep more of their own people from jumping ship.

Yeah just look at Microsoft where there mishandling resulted in closing of both Lionhead and Ensemble Studios, Rare are a former shell of themselves, Bungie who should have been a crown jewel in their portfolio ran away, Access Software didn't even last 5 years before being sold on and as excited people are about Bethesda and Activision Blizzard haven't proved they added more value to the Xbox brand for the price they paid for them.

The few times it has worked well for Microsoft is when then they bought a smaller studio and built them up which is how this yankee idea of capitalism is meant to work rather than just throwing money around on whims in the hope something works out.

It would make sense so they have a different voice and an additional outlook for the western market but the stories that came out during the Gamecube era of their mishandling western studios sounded hellish. However just imagine if they kept the Metroid Prime guys happy at Retro, the spark stayed at Rare and kept working with Silicon Knights but managing to straighten out Denis Dyack.