According to Eurogamer, the Nintendo NX will be portable. The device will feature buttons on either side of the screen that are detachable. These buttons would then become their own separate controllers.
Eurogamer’s Nintendo NX concept design
The NX will also supposedly feature a docking station. This docking station will allow the player to project onto a television. As for the internal hardware, the Tegra X1 mobile processor by Nvidia will be in the console. This processor has been notably found in Google Pixel C tablet.
The new console will also feature a new operating system.
Eurogamer’s informants have not yet been identified. The site has claimed that “a number of sources” have confirmed these details.
The Nintendo NX has been shrouded in rumor and speculation for some time now. Eurogamer’s sources in conjunction with patent filings may paint a more complete picture of what the Nintendo NX will be like.
A patent filed by Nintendo in Japan in 2014 featured information that may back up these reports. The patent details a tablet-like portable device with speakers on either side of it. The speakers are evidently meant to create a sense of surround-sound with vibration capabilities. On the left side there is what appears to be a D-pad and a joystick and on the right there are face buttons.
Device patented by Nintendo
This patent features striking similarities to the description given by Eurogamer about the NX portable apparatus.
It is stated in the patent that “an application can be acquired from a storage medium such as the game card”. The term “game card” appears to be purposefully ambiguous. It is referred to as “a game card in convenience of explanation,” and the game slot “may store an application other than a game”, such as an SD card.
A separate patent filed by Nintendo in 2014 appears to back up Eurogamer’s claim that the Nintendo NX features game cartridges. As stated in the patent, it “is not provided with an optical disk drive for reading out a program and/or data from an optical disk”.
The absence of an optical disk drive does not necessarily confirm Eurogamer’s report. However, these patents appear to fit neatly into the site’s projection of the Nintendo console.
The Nintendo NX is expected to launch in 2017.
