Nintendo NX Won’t Be Your Standard Home Console
According to a number of sources, the upcoming Nintendo NX will be a portable, handheld console featuring detachable controllers that will run cartridges (bringing it back to the old school!) over the disc based standard we’ve all become accustomed to.
Functioning as a high-powered console with its own high-resolution display it will apparently feature a pair of controllers, one on each side, that will be able to detach when required. Take the console home, connect it to your TV and you’ve got the home version of the machine. This will be achieved by connecting the NX to some sort of docking station.
As mentioned above, it also looks as if the Nintendo NX will forgo disc-based media in favor of cartridges once again. This works considering the fact that the NX is meant to be portable although the word is that Nintendo is recommending a 32GB cartridge which really isn’t all that big when you look at many games of this generation. Of course, logic would dictate some form of HDD on the machine so digital downloads will very likely be a part of Nintendo’s release strategy.
Other info provided by sources would indicate that due to the change in media, Nintendo will not be looking at making the console backwards compatible. Running on an entirely new OS, this would make it even more difficult to attempt backwards compatibility.
Using the Nvidia mobile processor, Tegra means that Nintendo once again isn’t concerning itself with graphical parity so much as managing to get the most amount of technology possible into a handheld style unit. Regardless of that, if it can run a game that looks like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, then we hardly have anything to worry about.