Nintendo NX: Hardware Specs, Games, Third Party Support And Everything You Need To Know

[JEMC]

Soundwave said:

There's a poster named Matt on NeoGaf, who apparently has a flawless track record for having inside info, but he posts very rarely and doesn't really boast about his claims.

He's cryptically said two things about NX:

- In a thread asking whether or not NX might be less powerful than the Wii U, he simply put "It's not". So it's more powerful than the Wii U according to him.

- It apparently has a screen, and the screen resolution is higher than what many people were speculating, but not as high as others would say. In the context of that thread, I take that to mean a 720p screen, since many were saying Nintendo would go with a very low res screen (480p or 540p) as that's usually been their style in the past, but it won't be an extremely high end screen (ala 1080p or something). 

Unseen 64 has said it's not aiming to compete with the PS4 on specs.

That all leads me to believe we're looking at a handheld that's more powerful than the Wii U (possibly not by a ton though) as the primary or maybe even the only SKU (though I still think there's probably two). My guesses basede on what we know right now ...

NX Portable - Main SKU, 300-350 GFLOP-ish AMD + ARM system on chip (14nm?). Better than Wii U graphics at 4-6 hour battery life, cheap but nice looking screen (720p, custom shape?). No dual screen, has some kind of new control input that changes the gameplay experience. Nintendo OS but can run Android apps that Nintendo has to approve and gets a cut of. Can stream games wirelessly to the TV, so it's "revolutionary" also for the fact that it's a portable and TV console all in one package. $250. 

NX Mini-Console - Optional device for people who are primarily play at home and want full 1080P resolution graphics and perhaps better graphics. Plays the same games as NX Portable. Same type of chip as the portable, just scaled up by 2x-4x (700 GFLOP-1.4 TFLOP depending on how far Nintendo wants to go) with more RAM. Fairly cheap to mass produce. 

I'm not an analyst, but I could also say the same two statements that "NeoGaf Matt" said by using common sense:

1-If NX replaces WiiU it has to be more powerful to make it attractive to Wii U owners. Who would make a console that's weaker than the console it is replacing? And who will buy such a thing?

2-720p is the best middle of the ground solution for Nintendo. As you said on another thread, HD screens probably cost the same or are even cheaper than lower resolution screens just because the market has moved forward and there's little demand for sub-HD screens but a lot of demand for HD ones. Also, you need lower spec'd hardware to run games at 720p than at 1080p. Therefore, 720p is the best solution for Nintendo.

Note: The interesting part of what you posted is that he said "screen", not "screens", and that means no DS/3DS compatibility. Just saying.

I won't go into a debate with you on specs, because it's all speculation, or what kind of console or consoles NX ends up been. I'll only say that there's no way in hell that Nintendo launches a portable console at $250, at least not if the 20 million units in its first year is true.