They can't. Japanese government would never allow it.

I'd prefer third party Nintendo of the two.

I mean, really the only reason why kiddie games don't do as well on PS360 is because... nobody bothers to put a lick of effort into them, outside of Media Molecule, Sony Japan, and Rare. Everybody else who makes kids' games nowadays thinks kids don't appreciate quality.

Cash isn't the problem, from what i have heard there are japanese laws that prohibits foreign companies from buying japanese companies

Look at Sega

LOL bought by apple!!!!!! If Nintendo goes 3rd party EVERYONE gets to play Mario and Pokemon. If Nintendo goes to apple nothing changes from now except it costs WAY more to play Nintendo games!

Foreign takeovers in Japan are rare, but not impossible or prohibited.

http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/09/25/tokyo-electron-deal-a-rare-foreign-takeover-in-japan/

But I doubt Apple would be even interested in the low-margin console market.

That isn't actually true. 

Citigroup purchased Japanese brokerage Nikko Cordial for something like $18 billion a few years ago (though they turned around and sold it quickly). 

A French company bought a 48% stake in Nissan and turned the company around.

Vodaphone sepnt $11.5 billion to buy a controlling share in Japan Telecom. 

Microsoft made a pitch to buy Nintendo in 1999, which Yamauchi did consider (not much point in considering it if it was impossible). 

So it does happen, it's just not that often. 

I think the Japanese government would only intervene if there was a situation where for example a foreign company was taking over a Japanese company and laying off large numbers of employees or something like that. But since Nintendo has a very small employee base to begin with, there wouldn't really be any need for layoffs, if anything under Apple, Nintendo would probably need to add more employees. 

If Apple bought them, they'd probably go into the console business and just put iOS on the handheld and console. So yeah, 3rd party is worse.

Yeah and said console could possibly end up winning the console race. So in a round about way, Nintendo could be back on top in that scenario, lol. 

Poor Atari and TurboGrafx/Neo Geo. Everyone forgets they made consoles before!

I rather Nintendo go third party then go to Apple only because the Xbox, Playstation, and PC have a history of gaming and Apple doesn't care as much as the other as far as dedicated gaming. But Apple - Pokemon - Disney collaboration can be very interesting though.