We have known about the existence of Nintendo's next console code-named NX for a while now. With the original announcement over a year ago, it set an expectation of big news for the 2016 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). When news of the NX not showing up at the event hit, a crazy amount of "no news is bad news" started to hit hard. Nintendo's silence has started to let the world dictate the hype and expectations of their new platform - and that's not usually a good thing.
A patent started a frenzy with people. Nintendo had something out there that hinted at a no button capacitive screen with analog sticks in the display. This would make sense to a degree with the idea of the next iteration of Nintendo Hardware would be this supposed console and handheld hybrid, and seeing this be somewhat of a "phone solution" isn't completely out of the picture.
And of course with patents like these, we started getting these fake mock ups that had many believing. Sure, one was totally a fake, but the next had a lot of us fooled. I mean, it looked like what the patent was going for, but at the same time, how many times have you seen a patent end up looking like what it was showing?
Nintendo would later have other patents making their way through showing how controllers would clip onto the touch screen so they could be removed and used as a controller or of course just using the tablet itself as is. This would make sense with the idea that you would dock a device to your TV set and use the controllers back on the couch to play your game. Another shows them having swappable positioning for the controller parts so that you could have many different control schemes. That seems a little much, but the idea is out there.
These have spun off some really classy looking designs I think in the hopeful eyes of Nintendo fans.
All of this starts leading into the troublesome part. Somewhere we all got this expectation (perhaps because of rumor crazy people like Emily Rogers) that Nintendo would be showing off the system around the same time as the Tokyo GameShow. Obviously that has come and gone, but leading up to that moment, if Nintendo news wasn't about NX, people were angry. It was so bad they had to get out in front of their 3DS focused Direct and say there wasn't going to be NX news to share. "If it's not NX, who cares?" - Things like that were said often and most of the time followed by lots of hostility and anger towards Nintendo. Now, I'm not going to say that it's unfair for people to be upset about getting no news about a device we have known is coming for a while, but I would hope that we could all calm down and know that we will get info when it's ready and good.
However, the next bit started a whole new wave of questions and emotions.
This was the big deal on NeoGaf for a while there. This is a drawing from someone supposedly on the inside showing what the NX is going for. Basically you would have your home console dock station, the tablet controller you could take anywhere and this possibility of a modular device that would go along side the tablet to give it more power if you wanted. Back when the PS4 slim and PS4 Pro were not announced, there was a user who did the drawings of what they would be and all of that, similar to what we are looking at here, that ended up becoming true. I mention that because for a while, it was believed that the PlayStation person mentioned above and this NX leaker were the same person; but that was debunked.
I also do not believe that Nintnedo would risk the new device being overly complicated as it doesn't line up with how they typically operate and definitely not in line with how they view everyone as their demographic.
So, why am I talking about all this? Well, the recent rumor of us getting a reveal of the Nintendo Direct (there pre-recorded news videos that all their announcements come out of) around October 21st started me thinking of it all over again. Of course I am one of those crazy people who check the news hoping for something new on NX; and I read the rumors and the forums just to see what people are up to. But this is the problem - Nintendo has said nothing and is letting the world of the Internet dictate the hype and expectations of their new console. Nintendo could unveil something truly amazing, and I think it will be a cool device honestly, but if we have a higher expectation on what it is and they don't meet that - they started off on the wrong foot. They can't afford to have a rough launch after the Wii U and they haven't done anything to calm the storm. People are already being very hyperbolic when it comes to how much time they have left to announce this thing. If we were to believe that the console does actually does come out in March, which is when Zelda Breath of the Wild was delayed until and the Amiibo supporting it have been "leaked" to launch (March 4th), then at the time of this writing we have about 5 months? Would you believe me that people were saying we only had 4 months 2 months ago? This is how bad it's getting. Nintendo needs to put something out soon to let the world know it's thinking of them and get a plan out there. I'm not saying they can't release a console by March and have enough time to market it; if the console is that hard to understand where they can't get it out there for the masses, they have an issue. However, the world is blowing this up in a bad way, and it needs to be tempered.
-Eddie
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