Nintendo NX “may work with smartphones, PCs and even rival consoles”

Nintendo NX “may work with smartphones, PCs and even rival consoles”

 

Not much is known about Nintendo’s upcoming NX console, but there has been some very interesting news coming from a wide selection of sources surrounding it, from AMD announcing that they were making a new Semi-Custom SOC all the way to Nintendo Patents for an upgrade-able console. 

Now an industry insider called David Gibson has stated that the new console may be able to work with smartphones, PCs and even rival consoles like the PS4, though at this time what that means can only be guesses at. 

What first comes to mind is In-Home Streaming, a feature that Xbox has with Windows 10 based PCs currently and the PS4 has with the Sony’s PlayStation Vita and PlayStation TV devices. Perhaps Nintendo wants to create an app for PC and for mobile devices so that gamers can stream their games other devices, or perhaps Nintendo wants players to use their smartphones with the Nintendo NX instead of the Wii U’s clunky screen/controller combo. 

 

    

AMD had announced in June of last year that they gained a 3rd Semi-custom SoC contract, which considering the first 2 are the Xbox One and PS4 likely means that AMD has just gained themselves a new console deal.

We know that Nintendo is producing a new console, codenamed the NX, which Nintendo hopes will be able to regain what they have lost in recent years with the release of the Wii U.  

One problem that the Wii U currently faces is a lack of 3rd party support, which is in part due to the fact that the Wii U is not use an x86 CPU and also due to the fact that their console is less powerful. These factors make the Wii U a much more difficult console to develop games for, especially alongside the PS4 and Xbox One, which combined with the consoles lower market share has led most developers to simply ignore the console. 

 

 

In September of last year Nintendo had joined the Khronos Group as a Contributor Member, joining companies like EA, Valve, Oxide games and even Oculus as members of the Open standards group. 

What Nintendo has to gain from joining this group is access to the Vulkan API early, an API which could be used as a basis for the Nintendo NX’s future API, which would make a lot of sense given the fact that AMD is likely making their console SoC and that the Vilkan API is based on AMD’s Mantle API. 

  

 

Nintendo has recently Patented the idea of a Console that can be upgraded with a supplemental computing device, allowing gamers to increase the speed or quality of the users gaming experience. 

What this effectively is is an upgradeable console, a games console which can have it’s computing power enhanced by adding an external “supplemental computing device” which can process data for the main console in order to allow games to play at a higher resolution or framerate.   

Right now it is unknown whether Nintendo plan on implementing this idea into their upcoming Nintendo NX console, but what Nintendo have effectively patented is the ability to upgrade their console partially through it’s life cycle, allowing the Nintendo NX to potential have a much greater lifespan and visuals than competing consoles. 

Right now this is just a patent, an idea, something which Nintendo may or may not implement into a future console, but the idea of an upgradeable console is not something that is new, the Nintendo 64 did have it’s famous Expansion Pak, which upgrades the console from 4MB or RAM to 8MB. An upgradeable console is something that has never been done to the scale shown in Nintendo’s new patent, adding more compute resources to the consoles and not just a few extra Megabytes of RAM. 

 

You can join the discussion on the Nintendo NX on the OC3D Forums.