A patent application filed by Nintendo in the US has revealed that the Japanese company’s next-gen console is likely to ship without a disc drive. However, that does not mean that the system will ask gamers to mandatorily download their games.
It has been discovered that the patent application shows a slot on the Nintendo console which will be able to work with memory cards. Could this mean that the system will mark the return of the ancient cartridge system? There are high possibilities of that happening.
This patent application was filed back in February, but it has been published only now. As revealed by Polygon, some NeoGaf users have found out that the design of this Nintendo device includes an internal hard drive and the means of connecting an external one.
This system is not at all likely to ship for another year, and by that time downloading games off the Internet is expected to become a much more popular affair than it is today. The Nintendo console will probably treat that as the primary means of buying a game, while it will provide cartridge-based hardware as a secondary method for those who prefer physical copies of their games.
Also read: Wii U lifetime sales breach 9.5 million, Nintendo sees profit for first time in 4 years
The Nintendo console has apparently been codenamed NX, and is expected to be a high-profile competitor to the PS4 and the Xbox One. There were rumors recently that it will be running a forked version of Google’s Android OS, but they had turned out to be false.
At the moment, details about this upcoming Nintendo console are extremely scarce, but we’ll have more for you as soon as new information about it is out into the open. So stay tuned.