Several reports claim that Nintendo's latest hardware will indeed be a VR/AR social platform. The Nintendo NX is expected to be available in 2016.
Nintendo held true to its words and have kept silent over details about the upcoming hardware. However, the company has been hinting and debunking rumors about what the Nintendo NX is not, rather than spilling the beans on what the latest platform is all about. Now the latest theory is that the NX could possibly be a new social VR/AR platform, Forbes reported.
Tim Merel, managing director at Digi-Capital strongly believes that the Nintendo NX will feature an augmented reality (AR) and/or virtual reality, possibly fixed in head mounted displays (HMDs), Fortune reported. Furthermore, the latest platform could incorporate smartphone HMD owners and in return, enable social gameplay. "This looks a bit like the original Wii strategy applied to the AR/VR market in the context of smartphones, and could enable Nintendo to leverage its IP to again disrupt an entire industry, and in a good way," Merel said.
Another point Merel considered was what the late president Satoru Iwata had described of the Nintendo-DeNA partnership when the NX was born. According to Iwata, "Smart devices have the widest reach and...the strongest potential...to connect with the largest number of consumers. We aim to construct a bridge between smart devices and dedicated video game hardware...dedicated video game systems and smart devices will benefit from synergies created between them." To that, Merel strongly suggests that the future market for NX will involve such smartphones for multiplayer gaming.
Meanwhile, Nintendo has recently debunked the idea that the NX is in fact a hybrid of both handheld devices and home consoles such as the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. Gaming Bolt stated that the upcoming platform will feature both specs from the handheld devices and home consoles, although clarified that it won't be a hybrid of the two.
Also, the Wall Street Journal reported that Nintendo has also debunked another rumor about Nintendo NX being available for Android. "There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX," a spokesperson revealed.
Clearly, Nintendo is doing a great job teasing fans about the upcoming platform. The company promised to announce more details in 2016, while rumors claim its official release in the coming year.
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