Why don't you just hit up Mr. Hirai and Mr. Iwata and see how that goes.

I think it's a neat idea, but it will never happen, sadly. It would be cool to have Mario and Nate Drake on the same console, however.

Partnership with Nintendo would be a huge slam dunk for Sony. 

Their stock price would soar. Nintendo's been profitable every fiscal year for the last 25 years except for one. 

Having a partner come aboard to help Sony with the financial burden of launching new hardware and bring huge killer IP to the table ... it would be a big deal. 

Particularily in Japan, investors would see this as the big 2 coming together. It would be Nintendo's "answer" to the cell phone onslaught they're facing too. Sony is the partner that can help them design a cell-phone compatible/based platform as they're already in that business. 

If Sony doesn't start focusing on making profits instead of getting more of the market share, that may happen. If Sony did go bankrupt(which I hope they don't) I would hope that Nintendo would buy Naughty Dog from them, and not Microsoft. After what Microsoft did to Rare, they've proven that they can not be trusted with a great developer.

The negatives that Sony have aren't positives of Nintendo for the most part, and vice versa, so I disagree there. E.g. both have excellent first party infrastructure, so they don't need eachothers help there at all. One weakpoint of Sony is PSN, it isn't bad by any means, but it's worse than the competition. What could Nintendo help with here? Nothing, they're only really building their online network now, a generation late. And what could Sony offer Nintendo? A service that isn't as good as XBL or Steam? Pointless. And then there are different attitudes towards business and gaming. Sony sells consoles at a loss at launch, Nintendo doesn't and I don't think they'd be willing to with Sony's partnership, it's not any form of security considering Sony's financial state, in fact it'd probably raise the risk.

lol no

At the end of the last generation it would have made sense to argue that Nintendo and Microsoft would benefit from a partnership, but at this point in time I don't see Nintendo getting much of a benefit from teaming up with Sony.

Nintendo is releasing the successor to the most popular system in the previous generation 12 (or more) months before their competition, at a time when current generation consoles are declining in sales. This in itself is a pretty good strategy for strong sales, and if Nintendo can release the Wii U at the "right" price and create the "right" software Nintendo will have little to fear in the upcoming generation.

The good thing about this is they're both Japanese businessmen, but not only that, for the first time ever, both Nintendo and Sony have president's that come from the game industry. I could see these two getting along pretty well actually, they both know the game business inside out and Japanese culture too. 

Sony needs what Nintendoesn't

Sony will only lead Nintendo into the doomed lands (for real). Nintendo should stay as far as away as possible!

Nintendo and Sony's exclusive content is very, very different though. Mario and Uncharted bring in different audiences. Ideal if you want one platform that can build a *massive* audience that pleases everyone. Right now, I don't think either one seperately can say that. 

Who says either Nintendo or Sony want an XBL service? Both just want a big audience, and no doubt I see things with the Miis + Miiverse and not to mention Nintendo's incredible back catalog of classic software that would be extremely appealling to Sony. 

Yeah XBL is great ... but I mean lets just think of the Virtual Console alone -- NES, SNES, N64, Playstation, PS2, GameCube, Wii, PS3. Good luck competing with that, Microsoft. 

Now is not the time for anyone to hitch their wagon to Sony's star, from a sheer financial perspective. Nintendo could end up with huge liabilities if Sony succumbs to its debt burden.

Also major strategic incompatibilities.