Personally I hope they move to severe ties with MS after this but they probably won’t as MS seem to understand that a buy out has to be consensual.
I have to say I want whatever Phil is smoking if he thinks that would be a good move for Nintendo, it’d be the death of Nintendo.
At this stage it's about
influence, not a direct buy out. If you look at valueact's history they have a knack of wholesale buying up shares in businesses and then strategically putting people in place at those businesses which enables the company whom they are working on behalf of (as a proxy) to benefit in some way (look up the situation at Olympus which led to them selling off their imaging business, search "valueact new York times", also look up the amount of influence they managed to have at Adobe, and even
Microsoft, which coincidentally was one of their first big "wins" as an activist investing business).
So step one would be inserting people (or even themselves) into the Nintendo BOD and then using those people to influence from within. The biggest issue in this situation is the fact that it's come to light via Spencer's email that Mason Morfit is not working alone (in that he's not acting solely on the best interests of ValueAct), Spencer is using him as a Proxy to gain influence over the Nintendo board with the end goal of softening them up to the ideal of a deep partnership/collaboration with Microsoft (or even a buyout).
My feeling is that the wheels are already in motion, especially considering how quick Nintendo were to sign that Activision deal.
Alarm bells should be ringing at Nintendo HQ, the imposters are likely already in place.