Rumor: Nintendo NX to Use Android-Based OS

There has been speculation aplenty when it comes to Nintendo’s next dedicated gaming platform, announced with the codename NX back in March. The company has made it clear that information on the system won’t be given until 2016 at the earliest, which has only caused further speculation about what form it will take, how powerful it will be, and so on. However, if a report from Japanese news corporation Nikkei is to be believed, one potentially major fact has been leaked.

As part of a Nikkei editorial on the partnership between Nintendo and DeNA, a source from Nintendo is listed as saying that the upcoming gaming system may run an operating system based in some way on Google’s Android. While this may seem like an odd decision due to how Android is typically associated with smartphones, Nintendo’s system could potentially benefit from using Android as a base in numerous ways: Android technical support is well-documented, and it could become easy for developers to port their games and apps from Android to the new OS, which would help alleviate Nintendo’s problem with third-party support. In addition to third-party apps, this could also allow Nintendo to port the games developed in partnership with DeNA between platforms with ease, offering even more games to play on NX. Finally, games developed for NX could be easy to support with backwards compatibility on future Nintendo systems, should the systems continue to use Android as a base.

While the claim must be filed as a rumor for the time being, the thought of Nintendo’s next system utilizing an existing OS to strengthen the platform is certainly interesting, as it opens up a variety of possibilities for NX. Let us know your thoughts below.

Source: Nikkei