I've been told in the past that the Japanese government would never let a national icon such as Nintendo be acquired by a foreign firm. I personally am not qualified to answer that though.

With that said I completely see where you're coming from and think that their games in particular match a lot of the ethos of Apple's own products. I do wonder if the internal cultures are vastly different though? The Bay and Japan have very different approaches to problem solving and business in general.

Yeah, I can see that getting stuck on ideology.

It just feels to me Nintendo doesn't have many options. Other than the IP, people would rather use the Steam Deck over the Switch. This was also a similar hardware story for non-mobile consoles.

Meanwhile, both the Switch and Deck are roughly an iPad with dedicated controllers. And the future is VR, but Nintendo is struggling with frame-rates even on the Switch.

I can see Apple making a deal with Nintendo, to build its next console as a peripheral on-top-of the iPad / visionOS. All the power of Apple Silicon and all of the inspiration of Nintendo IP.

Nintendo is a massively successful company that is still somehow selling tons of Switches even though it's an ancient device.

They're not going anywhere, nobody's going to buy them.

With Nintendo Switch currently at 130 million sales compared to 3 million for the Steam Deck, I’m not sure Nintendo has much to worry about. Admittedly, the Steam Deck has been out for much less time, but it also went through a big hype cycle at launch. The Switch is lighter and thinner, has more battery life, is less expensive, and to a significant extent is targeting a different audience. In 2023 it’s long in the tooth, but supposedly it will be replaced next year. As for the iPad, well, the Switch has been competing with it for its whole lifetime and has succeeded anyway. If nothing else, the iPad is much more expensive than the Switch - never mind the Vision Pro’s price!

> Other than the IP, people would rather use the Steam Deck over the Switch.

This is very tech people loop take. Targeted people just want to play games.

Not only doesn't Nintendo have to worry about the SteamDeck sales, the competion in ramping up with devices from Asus, Lenovo and others, all running Windows proper instead of emulating it.