Rumor: Nintendo NX May Be Based On Android

Japanese periodical Nikkei has dropped a bombshell of a rumor, suggesting that Nintendo’s NX platform may be using an Android operating system.

This was in context of an article describing Nintendo’s partnership with DeNA, but Nikkei did not get this information from Nintendo or DeNA directly. Instead, they claim they have an insider source who has shared that this could be a possibility.

As translated by fan duckroll, this represents a radical paradigm shift for the Kyoto based company, who had traditionally developed both their own hardware and software internally. The fact that third parties stopped supporting the Wii U became a turning point for the company.

Japan based gaming consultant Dr Serkan Toto provided further context. The same article revealed that Nintendo was in talks with Japanese telecommunications company Docomo to bring games to their analog phones. This plan was codenamed Project Aurora, and of course was ultimately scrapped.

that Nintendo in 2000 was in talks with JP telco Docomo to bring their games to phones under "project Aurora”. That plan was scrapped. (3)

— Dr. Serkan Toto (@serkantoto) June 1, 2015

Nintendo has a spotty record working with third parties. The company’s longtime CEO, Hiroshi Yamauchi, deliberately introduced restrictive policies against these developers, adding proprietary chips that required they make NES, SNES and N64 cartridges only with Nintendo. Furthermore, Nintendo limited the amount of carts developers could manufacture for the NES.

Wii U’s inability to retain third parties is different in many ways, but one thing Nintendo never changed from the Yamauchi years was forcing third parties to work with their bespoke platforms. If the rumor proves true, NX will see an influx of developers and games big and small.

Would you like an Android based Nintendo platform? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.