This is all of course rumor and speculation at this point, though Nintendo did file some very real patents that appear to be for the publisher’s next major console, the Nintendo NX. Companies file for patents all the time. This filing was originally placed in February 2015, but was only published yesterday.
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Nintendo could be planning a gaming console without an optical disc drive, according to a recent patent application. Servers will distribute games data to “Game Apparatus”.
The new filing also states the potential console’s controller would feature a “display unit”, which suggests the system has a Wii U-like gampad.
Support for an external hard disk drive is mentioned as well as SD memory cards, with the reasoning behind the lack of optical disk drive given that it allows for a “reduction in cost, size and the like” in comparison to a console that does have one.
What do you think of a disk-less Nintendo console?
As seen in a Nintendo US patent discovered by astute NeoGAF readers, this upcoming hardware’s early version version didn’t include such a drive.
If it is for NX then there’s still always a chance things will change before launch.
Nintendo teased the NX back in March, but didn’t reveal anything about it other than it’s a “dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept” and more details will be revealed next year.
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Going all digital is a bold move from Nintendo but it would be hard to sell users the idea.
