Nintendo has two amazingly talented hardware divisions that work on home consoles and handheld devices. These teams have come up with some amazing concepts that have taken the market by storm, like the Wii and the Nintendo DS. Now, what would happen if these two teams were to combine forces? That very scenario may just be happening.

Japanese newspaper Nikkei is reporting that Nintendo plans to unify its hardware divisions under one roof to focus on interactivity between the two devices. The translated report, courtesy of IGN, states that Nintendo “aims to come up with next-generation game systems that will turn heads” in response to “more people using their smartphones and tablets for entertainment via the Internet.”

When combined later this year, the team will be comprised of 280 people from both sides of hardware development. Beyond having the teams work together to come up with new ideas, the report states that the company is hoping the unified team will speed up the development process of new consoles and handhelds. The company also “sees interactions between engineers as a potential hotbed for new ideas.”

So what kind of new ideas can we expect from the unified team? Nothing too revolutionary is mentioned, but a few ideas being kicked around include using the 3DS as a controller for the Wii U and continuing a console game on a handheld device. It should be noted that both of these concepts have been implemented in a few games from Sony with the PS3 and Vita, and Capcom is implementing both in Ultimate Monster Hunter 3 for Wii U and 3DS.

By far, the most interesting part of the report comes near the end when the paper suggests Nintendo may also be looking to further integration with social media and online video sites. The Wii U already has a closed social network in Miiverse, but integration with Twitter would only be a good thing.

In that same vein, Nintendo could integrate YouTube into games allowing players to upload direct video from their games to YouTube. A few fighters on the PS3 and Xbox 360 already offer this functionality so it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of reason to see it being implemented on the Wii U.