Monday 1 June 2015

UPDATED - RUMOUR: Nintendo's NX Android Based?!?

Well E3 is officially on the way, that's 15 days of rumours and leaks ahead of us and here's another but this one is jumping far ahead... next year.

UPDATE: Nintendo has responded to the rumours that the potental Wii U/3DS successor, NX doesnt no use Android

 "There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX."

So that's that then, This timely response is surprising as Nintendo often ignores rumours. However given that the NX was announced early to assure fans that Nintendo wasn't abandoning console gaming for mobile, I suspect that today's clarification is in the same vein.


Couldn't think of an appropriate image
According to an "insider" Nintendo has a outrageous plan for combating it's third party problem, make the NX Android based. The idea being developers could easily port games to/from other android platforms.

This isn't the first time Nintendo has been linked to Android. After the Wii U's first appearance at E3 plenty of rumours appeared stating the Gamepad was an Android powered.

Of course this is all rumours for now, typically Nintendo is fairly watertight when it comes to leaks like this. We only really hear real information closer to E3 (such as Project Cafe's touchscreen controller and the revolutions motion wand) as other parties become involved for the convention. Seeing as we won't be hearing about the NX till E3 2016 it'll be a while before hear if this is true.

Abe's Take
I don't see Nintendo taking this route. It wouldn't make it any easier for the 3rd parties to release their AAA games on the NX, and would only be of use to Android developers. This move could permanently separate Nintendo from the "big three" and join the ranks of Amazon, Nvidia and the other "novelty systems". It also seems to go against the whole DeNA partnership, with an Android based system they'd be able to simply move any NX game across to the open Android Market. Ultimately Nintendo could secure more third party support by matching the specs/architecture of the X1/PS4, supporting more middleware and through better marketing .

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