When AMD's current GPUs are selling for as cheap as they are I feel the parts in that opinion piece saying that Nintendo doesn't have the stomach to put out a comparable spec system is pretty fallacious tbh.
Eurogamer are acting like they've been proven correct already about NX and what it really is, but they've been wrong about the hardware 3DS and Vita had before.
As SuperMetaldave64 pointed out in his recent video NVidia has said a thing about winning any business from a console maker or developing any semi-custom SOC or chip for an external partner, seems odd that they wouldn't add that to their income statements and talk about added revenue to their bottom line.
Nintendo's problem in the past is that they haven't made games that appeal to the biggest market in the dedicated gaming space, namely western 3rd party gamers.
They could easily make titles that are less tarted for the eastern market, like Asia or their core Nintendo gamers, to gain new business.
Making a system with capable specs benefits every developer, even Nintendo's own studios and considering that even tiny Indie studios with teams of less than 20 people can make games to take advantage of high end PC specs I find it hard to believe that an experienced game development group like Nintendo couldn't put out a host of games to do so on a more powerful system than XB1 or PS4.
NX could have a console unit that sits under your TV, with a GPU on par with the RX 460 and a Zen CPU placed on a piece of substrate (an MCM like Wii U), then also have a tablet that does what this rumor suggests, packing something a bit less meaty, downclocked to handle more mobile style games.
In mobile mode the performance could be around 2X the Wii U, but if you have access to an internet connection you can link up with your home console and your internal hardware in the tablet can share processing with the console, thus games run much better, even on the go.
This wouldn't have to be that expensive to make, considering the price of that GPU tech, other parts are pretty cheap too.
Free wifi is available in a lot of places, like coffee shops, libraries, etc and sim card contracts are pretty cheap now, so maybe Nintendo could even work with mobile tariff providers to create a yearly subscription plan like a PS+ or XBL, add in access to rented game service and Nintendo can basically have a modern console level experience available to their customers.
Sure NX could just be what's mentioned in the Eurogamer article, but while that's a cool idea IMO, I don't think Nintendo would intentionally go down an avenue that has caused their console business to diminish to ridiculously low numbers with Wii U.
Intentionally abandoning 3rd party, by not providing them with sufficient hardware to play their games, especially when we have some of those studios saying how good they think NX is, knowing the tech inside I find it hard to believe that NX will be this weak.
I like the rumored idea of a tablet that can allow you to connect up to a TV at home, plus also allow gamers to be able to play local multiplayer on a handheld device anywhere and the potential options for controller input by being able to also use motion gaming are good IMO, I just don't think there's any evidence for Nintendo going with hardware that weak.
