It's no secret anymore that Nintendo is in some dire business straits. After decades of profitability it has just recorded its third straight fiscal year loss, dragged down by dismal sales for the Wii U and mobile-dampened enthusiasm for the 3DS.

Luckily, a few select members of Ars Technica's editorial team have magically been named to Nintendo's board of directors and have been given free rein to do whatever we please to turn the company around. Our sure-fire, can't-miss ideas for staving off financial ruin are laid out below, and they will be put into effect just as soon as the necessary arrangements can be made.

OK, that last paragraph is obviously false. But we still think our ideas for turning Nintendo around are pretty good. See for yourselves!

Idea 1: Exploit established franchises even more

Activision published 21 games in the Guitar/Band/DJ Hero franchise in a four-year span. It released 15 distinct games with the "Tony Hawk" name on them in 13 years. And, it has cranked out a new Call of Duty game every year since 2006. This has earned Activision a reputation as a soulless corporate machine that squeezes every drop out of its popular franchises as quickly and mercilessly as possible. It has also made Activision the biggest video game publisher in the world.

Nintendo, on the other hand, takes its time between marquee releases in many of its major franchises. Legend of Zelda, Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. games tend to be once-a-console-generation affairs, rather than Activision-style, once-a-year releases. There have only been ten main Metroid titles since the series started in 1986 (not counting re-releases), and popular second-tier franchises like Star Fox, F-Zero, and Punch-Out barely managed a dozen titles between them decades after their debuts.

This has earned Nintendo a reputation as a company with a devotion to quality and a willingness to take the time necessary to develop revolutionary games. As we noted above, it has also made Nintendo a company on the brink of financial catastrophe.

With third-party developers giving Nintendo systems middling to nonexistent support since the days of the Nintendo 64, the company has always relied on its amazingly deep bench of popular first-party franchises to keep it afloat. These games are the reason people buy Nintendo systems, and pretty much the only reason the company wasn't relegated to the dust bin of history as a console manufacturer years ago. And there just aren't enough of them on the Wii U.

Roughly 19 months after the Wii U's launch, you can still count the marquee franchise releases on the system with one hand: two Mario games, one Pikmin game, and a Donkey Kong Country title (I am not counting tepid re-releases like Wii Sports Club, Wii Fit U, or Zelda: Wind Waker HD). Those are all good games, but apparently they don't form the critical mass of first-party exclusives needed to get hoards of people to buy a Nintendo console. Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. are coming relatively soon, but perhaps too late to really make a long-term difference.

But imagine if Nintendo had taken a page from Activision's playbook and simply thrown together the development resources to get all of its major franchises out in time for the Wii U's second holiday season. Imagine a world where the Wii U currently had not only all the games listed above during Christmas 2013, but also a new Zelda, Metroid, Star Fox, Punch-Out, Kirby, and (why not?) a Pilotwings game to boot. Imagine if Nintendo promised that most if not all of these series would have follow-ups in the next year or two as well. Is that starting to look more like a system that more people would be interested in buying?

Of course, making all these games isn't just a matter of snapping your fingers; it would take a significant investment of resources to speed up Nintendo's usually plodding development cycle. But the company is currently sitting on over $3 billion in cash that it could use to hire new talent and/or spend recruiting second- and third-party developers to do some contract work with its characters. Better to spend that money now trying to revive your console business than watch it slowly bleed away through annual losses, right?

Sure, rushing so many big-name titles at once could lead to a lower overall quality of the games released; some titles might see incremental improvements rather than revolutionary changes from their predecessors, for instance. That would be a shame from a critical perspective, but maybe not a huge problem from a business perspective. Even if the "rushed" Nintendo titles would have gameplay that simply provided more-of-the-same franchise familiarity, the established name recognition and baseline of quality from previous titles would likely attract plenty of happy customers. The increased volume of titles could also have important network effects, leading to more sales for the Wii U hardware and therefore more interest from currently reluctant third-party developers.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that Nintendo is willing to make sure most of its big-name releases have the development time they need to be memorable, high-quality releases. But from a purely business perspective, this strategy just isn't cutting it anymore. Nintendo needs to exploit its bevy of franchises as quickly as possible while it still can to have a chance of surviving in its current form.

—Gaming Editor Kyle Orland

Idea 2: Find five more Shigeru Miyamotos

When Shigeru Miyamoto joined the game-design teams at Nintendo, he had no programming experience to speak of. His training and experience were all in toy design and art, and he failed with his debut game, arcade flop Radar Scope, before striking gold with Donkey Kong. That’s good context at this point, because Nintendo’s best modern franchises are far from modern. Zelda, Mario, and Pokemon still print money, but not as much as they used to. Even the stellar, semi-recent Super Smash Bros. series is getting little more than a fresh coat of paint later this year.

If you gave me the keys to Nintendo, I'd use the company’s Scrooge McDuck-sized safe of cash to find the next Shigeru Miyamoto. As Chief Overspending Officer, I’d start by doubling down on R&D: resurrect the vitality sensor project; develop a tiny Game Boy-branded attachment for smartphones; have a team focus on wearable tech that could open a new world of gaming potential. In short, I'd try all kinds of silly crap.

But I’d put more of my hopes into a “five points of light” initiative, meant to dig Nintendo out of its game-design rut and its reliance on classic series. I'd hire roughly 60 to 80 greenhorns from varied disciplines—engineering, toy design, cartooning, etc.—and split them into five incubation labs with hopes of discovering another out-of-nowhere Shigeru Miyamoto or Gunpei Yokoi. No old IP or sequels could come out of these labs—just a magical, five-office effort full of experimentation and failure until a golden game emerges.

There’s no guarantee that a thousand novices on a thousand typewriters will develop a Shakespeare-worthy game, but Nintendo is in an economic position to give it a shot, as opposed to resting on its sequel-loaded laurels.

—Technology Reporter Sam Machkovech

Idea 3: Embrace mobile platforms and the Internet

Nintendo suffers from the same obsessive fixation on total vertical integration and control that it's always suffered. It was an attitude that served the company well in the 1980s, but it was showing cracks even as early as 1996 when the cartridge-based Nintendo 64 debuted next to its disc-based competitors. The company needs to firmly flush its outmoded ideas of end-to-end control of hardware and software down the toilet of history.

A big part of this would be conceding that Nintendo’s stake in the mobile gaming world is trending toward total irrelevance, and then loosening the licensing reins on flagship properties. An officially sanctioned Mario title on iOS would be the next best thing to actually owning a money printing press, and that’s just the tip of the potential iceberg. There are a huge variety of ludicrously lucrative cross-licensing deals waiting in the wings (Angry Birds Pokémon, anyone?).

But it’s a virtual certainty that Nintendo won’t do this, even in the face of worsening quarterly results. It won’t because the executives will point to decades of success on the back of a totally siloed, totally integrated strategy, and they will insist that what once was, will be again. In doing so, Nintendo's leadership continue to exhibit a traditionally eastern management style that fails to mesh with an increasingly globalized gaming market. Nintendo’s executives appear to believe the company has an almost Nihonjinron-esque inherent superiority: they don’t need anyone else to be successful because Nintendo is Nintendo.

However, just because the company sold infinity bajillion DS and Wii systems in the past doesn’t mean that the gravy train ride gets to continue indefinitely. Rather than dismissing third party partners, the company would be better served by embracing new ways to pull in money. Concerns about brand dilution are easily dismissed—ambassador properties like Mario are strong enough to easily withstand a little platform porting (everyone knows Mario equals Nintendo, even if you’re controlling him on an iPad), and other flagships like Pokémon are already so ridiculously diverse and diluted that they’ve practically become commodities.

Another aspect of this decoupling of Nintendo hardware from Nintendo software would be a full embrace of the Internet, not just as a basic content delivery mechanism for purchases, but as a full-on major revenue source. In fact, Nintendo wouldn’t have to be terribly innovative at all in order to pull in more money from online—just emulate what companies like Microsoft and Sony have already done.

Say these four words with me: Massively multiplayer online Pokémon. You know what those words sound like? They sound like infinite money. If only Nintendo would see it.

—Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson