The patent which Nintendo filed way back in February in the United States for a "Stationary Game Apparatus, Game Apparatus, Game System, Recording Medium and Speed Control Method" has finally been published and made available to the public last Thursday.
But since its application for a console was without an optical disc drive, varying speculations among stationary game enthusiasts have arisen as to how Nintendo's next piece of hardware would eventually look like.
In the schematic diagram published, it is shown that it has a card slot, wherein a memory card containing programs is inserted. The filing likewise shows an internal hard drive and a way by which an external drive may be connected.
Nintendo also described a controller with a display screen and Speed Control Processing.
People joining the online forum NeoGAF, who were actually the first to spot the filing, considered that the presence of the memory card and the slot may signify the return of the cartridge- based console for the first time since Nintendo 64, released almost 20 years ago. It was not clear, however, what programs would be available on such a memory card with its size, and whether games would be downloaded by the console from a digital service to its internal drive, or whether they will be streamed.
Last March, the multinational consumer electronics company revealed that it was working on a new console, temporarily called NX, upon its announcement that it entered into another Japanese mobile games company, DeNA. The said collaboration has its focus on a membership service that covers existing hardware of Nintendo, plus smart devices, PCs and the new console.
From then on, the late Satoru Iwata, who was also Nintendo's former President, defended the company from questions about the NX and declared that they would be discussing the plans for the console until the following year. Their last official statement was issued in June, denying that NX will be using the Android operating system.
