According to a post on The Wall Street Journal a new Nintendo console, based on the NX platform announced earlier this year, might be coming out as early as next year. Nintendo has already started distributing software development kits for the platform and has launched a developer portal, which leads analysts to believe that the company is giving developers time to develop games for a potential launch in 2016.
This early release speculation is also backed by the fact that Nintendo’s Wii U and 3DS have already been out for several years now and they are outclassed, from a technical standpoint, by other consoles on the market. “We are increasingly of the idea that Nintendo might launch the NX in 2016 because of the softness of 3DS and Wii U” says David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Capital Securities, for The Wall Street Journal.
The post goes on to say that, according to people familiar with development plans, Nintendo “would likely include both a console and at least one mobile unit” and that “[they] would aim to put industry-leading chips in the NX devices” (Ambiguous, old businessman talk, Hazaa!). This, coupled with Square Enix’s announcement back in July that their latest installment of the Dragon Quest franchise would be coming to the NX platform as well as on PlayStation 4 and 3DS, leads us to believe that maybe Nintendo is planning a console that will be at least on par with PS4.
As a personal note, I hope for Nintendo’s sake they come up with something better than PS4, because by the time their new console will be out, the PS4 would’ve been on the market for 3 or 4 years maybe.