What if Sony and Nintendo collaborated on a gaming console?

The gaming community is arguably split into two firm camps: consoles and PCs. And within the camp that argues for the benefits of gaming consoles, there are a couple of major rivals all vying for that elusive spot below your TV—the Nintendo Switch, the PlayStation 4 (for now), and the Xbox One X (again, for now). But what if I told you that two of the above have actually collaborated on a prototype?

According to a video by Engadget, there was once a time when Nintendo and Sony worked together on a CD-based add-on for the popular SNES—and it was dubbed the “Nintendo PlayStation”. There are probably a few prototypes lying around somewhere in the world, but according to Vice, one of them has just been sold for US$360,000 (about RM1.5 million). The description of the prototype on an auction site claims that this is the “last remaining prototype” in existence out of the 200 that were created during Sony and Nintendo’s ill-fated joint venture.

“We at Heritage can attest the prototype is working, as we’ve played a couple of rounds of Mortal Kombat on it using a Super Famicom cartridge. The prototype does share some exterior similarities with both the Super Nintendo and the Sony PlayStation, but it has its own, unique characteristics as well.”

“It has not only a slot for Super Famicom and Super Nintendo games, but a CD-ROM drive that was meant to play disc-based media and presumably video games as well.”

In an interview with Engadget, the owners of the “Nintendo PlayStation” picked it up at a bankruptcy auction for very low price—just US$75 (about RM315). Buy low, sell high at its finest. Still, it appears to have been a happy coincidence, with the buyer saying that after it was acquired, the prototype was stored in the attic. The son of the buyer then came across the device on Reddit and realised that they had stumbled across an iconic piece of gaming history—estimated to be the most expensive collectable in gaming history.

Have a look at the interview below:

I’d have to say that it’s a shame that we never saw the fruits of this collaboration between Sony and Nintendo. Nintendo has certainly seen success with its latest “console”, the Switch, and we’re expecting to see a new, upgraded Switch sometime soon. It would have been awesome to see the PlayStation’s huge success over the last decade mixed in with the creative, light-hearted nature of the Nintendo Switch.