Despite the original Wii's success, Nintendo made a mistake by selling their shares in Rare to fund the Wii's Research and Development costs. Also they should have kept their mouth shut about NX until it was closer to completion...
My biggest problem with Saturo Iwata's reign was sacrificing shares in RARE simply for extra money to put towards Research and Development, that eventually led to the Wii. How could I have a problem with that being that the Wii was Nintendo's most successful console? With the Wii U they decided to essentially ditch all that R & D value, and throw motion gaming as an often optional, secondary function no different than what any platform currently offers. Wii opened up to a new audience. Naturally that same audience has upgraded their TV's from SD to HD over time. The Wii was not about physical power at any point, and I know they wouldn't have sold as much of a Wii HD (hypothetical, powered up but otherwise identical console to the Wii) as they sold the original Wii, but a lot of those same people would have upgraded, rather then family's of new gamers giving up on it when they saw they had to learn the Wii U's touch pad. They lost a lot of customers. The new customers acquired by the Wii all just stick with the original, to the point Wii. The hard core gamers flocked to Sony and Microsoft for third party support, shear power, and better more developed online environments in general. If they were going to leave motion gaming as a secondary function rather then continue to embrace it, they should have gone all out accommodating the core gaming audience.
So how does this relate to Rare. I understand R & D is important, necessary, and helps big companies make informed decisions, but for a company that big to need to sell assets in order to fund the current R & D project, is just more then necessary. Most significant changes occur after the R & D period anyway. Look how Xbox One changed from an online only, no disc sharing, non backward compatible, mandatory Kinect, etc. Into the Microsoft version of what resembles what PS4 has been all along + Micorsoft's own features and games of course. All those changes were due to public feedback/seeing what worked sooo well for Sony compared to what they were doing, not R & D. Nintendo would have wound up with more or less the same Wii without spending sooo much on R & D, and they would still have RARE. RARE is just the kick(well one of the kicks anyway) that Nintendo needs right now. Perfect Dark games, Better 3D adventure Donkey Kong Games, Golden Eye, The Banjo Kazooie series where the fan base is and what ever else RARE would have come up with to aid Nintendo, had they not been owned by Microsoft since Nintendo gave up their shares.
NX was a great idea, but unfortunately by making it's existence public information way ahead of time to keep investors interested in the company, I suspect one thing led to another and it eventually, indirectly led to Sony and Microsoft making their own powered up consoles that will be released during the same time period, and by the sounds of it, Microsoft's will be more powerful then the NX. NX will regain 3rd party support, introduce "a new way to play", and hopefully prove Nintendo learned from Wii U's short falls.
Yes Rare has helped Microsoft, but not with stuff Microsoft couldn't have done without them(aside from Rare owned stuff directly related to projects that succeeded while they were with Nintendo) But had Nintendo still had their shares in Rare, or better yet bought them outright, Nintendo's game line up the past decade or so would have had a little more excitement. No it wouldn't have been exactly what they need, nor the ultimate solution for them, but it still would have been a positive thing nonetheless.
