There have been a lot of rumors regarding Nintendo's upcoming console, which has been dubbed as Project NX. Last week, the rumors about the small and tedious oval controller that was supposed to be the NX's controller were debunked as very elaborate photoshops by people who were just bored and wanted to have some fun.
The latest rumor has popped up via Reddit's NintendoNX subreddit just a few days ago. The internet has run wild with the news postings, but I want to pull you back to reality as we go over what the supposed "AAA" developer mentioned.
Our devkit's controller:
Doesn't have an oval screen. Ours is a standard rectangle.
Has physical buttons with a screen behind them. It doesn't have a form shifting screen, nor does it have a touchscreen with haptic feedback.
Is hardwired to the devkit, which looks like a boring black box with some USB ports and a disc drive.
However, that fake does get a couple things right. It does have scroll wheel shoulder buttons, but in addition to them it also has two regular shoulder buttons labeled ZL and ZR. It also has a headphone jack in the bottom of the controller.
Some other things I can tell you:
I don't know if the NX is backwards compatible with the Wii U or 3DS or not, but it doesn't look like it is. The system is different enough from both that I think it would be hard to play games from other consoles.
The controller is sort of a game system in its own, but it's not a replacement for the 3DS. It works like a companion app on a phone, and you can take it with you and control some things from your game, like how the VMU on the Dreamcast let you take a Chao with you and train it.
No one outside Nintendo knows what the NX's name is. It's still the NX here internally.
There's a lot to unwrap here, so let's tackle what we can.
Regarding the controller, any rumor that you read about it should be taken with a truckload of salt. After watching someone go through incredible steps to fool people for a couple of days, posting just a simple comment about the controller being rectangle with a screen isn't exactly going out on a limb. After all, the description given basically describes the current Wii U controller with a couple of added features. Also, for those who were saying that the controller being hardwired is a guarantee it's a fake? No, it means nothing. Some devkits are hardwired. Others are not. There's no correlation one way or the other, so it will be a wait and see approach.
The extra information that the alleged AAA developer states isn't exactly mind-blowing information. Nintendo seems to be following the early steps of Sony and Microsoft by slowly phasing out backward compatibility. They've just been quite stubborn about keeping it.
Now, not mentioned in the post above is the real reason for this article: The power of the system. When asked about the system specifics, our anonymous poster gave this information:
Sorry, I'm not putting my employment at risk by leaking hard details.
But I will tell you that it's slightly above the power of the PS4. One of the games we're releasing for it at launch is a port of one of our games for Xbox One and PS4.
Interesting. It's also not likely when looking at console history.
The truth is that in every generation of console gaming, Nintendo has not had the most powerful console on the market. Even the wildly popular Super Nintendo wasn't as powerful as the Sega Genesis, but it didn't matter as the SNES blew the Genesis out of the water in sales. Nintendo's first system, the NES/Famicom, wasn't as powerful as the Sega Master System or Mark III. The N64 was close, but the Playstation was slightly better.
Nintendo has stuck with the belief that power isn't everything and as long as the games are fun, people don't care about graphics. The evidence for that is that the Wii U was Nintendo's first system to actually have an HDMI connection for it, and for Nintendo, that was so newsworthy that they felt the need to brag about it at their release conference. Meanwhile, the PS3 and Xbox 360 both had HDMI outputs seven years before the Wii U made its debut.
Now, I could be wrong. This could all be correct information that the anonymous poster is giving to us and it could be the reason that Sony is rumored to be building a more powerful PS4 for the upcoming holiday. I still don't believe it, and history is on my side. For now, we'll have to wait until Nintendo makes their official reveal, which we fully expect at E3.
