Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24495139-20150826041018

This is just a general discussion on the next generation Nintendo platform, NX.

Starting off, some things we know. It was announced formally during the DeNA Nintendo partnership press conference as a counter to those worried Nintendo would become a mobile-oriented company. This means the NX is in fact a core gaming machine. This meeting also revealing that DeNA would be leading the account system behind the platform. The account system is suppose to integrate Club Nintendo & Nintendo Network into a singular service. While it is currently unknown how liberal this account system will be, it will likely be more liberal than the current one.

The second thing we know is from investor meetings. From certain questions and answers, we know that the NX will integrate the Wii U's "architecture". This does not necessarily mean CPU architecture since no one produces PowerPC (the architecture used by GameCube, Wii and Wii U) anymore, but rather the frameworks the Wii U like Miiverse and the eShop and perhaps the tools like Nintendo Web Framework. We also know that Nintendo is working on both a handheld and console successor. However, these will integrate that architecture to make producing games betweeen the system easier, like iOS. This suggests the NX is both successors. However, it isn't going to a hybrid since that defeats the purpose of this statement. Instead, it should be multiple SKUs with handheld and console form factors

The third thing we know is that Square Enix is going to support the NX. Both Dragon Quest X and Dragon Quest XI were announced for the NX. The Dragon Quest XI port is likely to be based on the PS4 version rather than the 3DS though since it was made in Unreal 4 and that would easier to port over than converting 3DS code. This suggests Unreal 4 is being made for the NX which is good since that was an issue with tthe Wii U. Square Enix later backpedalled saying that they were checking the NX out for these games but that was likely due to the NX not supposed to be properly discussed yet. Also in an interview with on of the Final Fantasy 14 (the MMO one) developers, they mentioned they would like to bring that game to the NX if it supported cross-platform play. Not as hard confirmation but still interesting. For reference, Nintendo does support cross-platform play as shown with Pure Chess (works with mobile and Steam versions) and Cubemen 2 (the level sharing between Wii U and Steam).

For some rumors, there has been some rumors that AMD is providing the chipset for the NX. And due to the earlier statements, it has been suggested that the processor will run on ARM due to x86 not being very good for portable platforms. The rumor also suggests the first SKU will release in Summer 2016.  