As if the race for the ultimate next generation gaming experience wasn't tight enough, one of planet earth's biggest companies may be looking to get its feet wet. Sort of.

Apple may be looking to go the way of arch rival Microsoft in the ever-expanding console gaming industry by purchasing a company whose very name is synonymous with the industry itself: Nintendo.

Apple is no stranger to the home gaming industry, despite having a less-than-stellar debut in the mid 90's. In 1995, Apple released the Bandai Pippin: a home gaming console, which, to put it mildly, tanked due to its technological inferiority compared to rival products at the time. It was even "included in PC World's '25 Worst Tech Products of All Time'" (source: crave.cnet.co.uk).

Enter plan B: If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em.

With Apple's financial machismo -- namely a market cap of $57.1B, an acquisition of Nintendo is not completely impossible. However, the "agressive takeovers of Japanese companies can be difficult and expensive" (source: crave.cnet.co.uk).

If the scenario does infact go down, a merger would be more likelly. A collective formation of a new company altogether could not be out of the question either.

Motivation for the possible acquisition would be most likely to keep pace with Microsoft in the video game industry, which has experienced tremendous success since introducing its debut gaming console, the Xbox, in 2001. It could also go long way in improving the lackluster market share of the Apple Macintosh and reinforce the already superb market share of Apple's line of mp3 players, the ipod.