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greenmedic88 on 15 November 2016
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DonFerrari said:
greenmedic88 said:

Of course. It's the ability for every vendor to create their own version of Android that has resulted in the market fragmentation that makes iOS produce twice as much revenue on half as many downloads. 

While I don't know whether Nintendo would want to use Android any more than you do, the only reason would be as a shortcut.

You're probably thinking compatibility: the Android powered Switch would be able to play all the existing Android games/apps or something to that effect, but I'm thinking Nintendo wants to stamp its brand firmly on the Switch and the perception that it was powered by another flavor of Android, even if it was Nintendo's flavor wouldn't exactly help the product distinguish itself, and that would include having it run all the same Android apps that run on all the existing Android devices. 

But, as I said, I don't know. Only Nintendo's engineers and presumably any 3rd party software developers know. 

Even CNET reported:

What operating system is it running?

Great question. Nintendo typically rolls its own operating systems, and it probably will again, since purpose-built software is often more reliable and efficient. Or, it could be Android under the hood -- maybe a very, very lean, modified build of Android like the one Amazon uses on its tablets.

And how is it good to differentiate yourself by being worse? Or is WiiU OS or even Wii top of class OSs to make it a good diferentiation?

How was it good for SCE to differentiate itself by developing the CBE when perfectly acceptable x86 based CPUs were available? How was it good for SCE to differentiate itself by developing the PS3 OS when it ran LINUX out of the box as well? 

You're asking the wrong question to the wrong person. Nintedo does what it wants to do; they always have with mixed results.

They like full control of their walled garden which is what started the grumblings of 3rd party developers way back with the original NES, and lost them the majority share of 3rd party support by the time SCE rolled around with the original PS as a direct result of their controlling policies. It was that exact mindset that led to the development of the original Playstation to begin with as it was originally supposed to be a Super Nintendo CD-ROM add on. 

You're making the mighty assumption that presumably by merit of being Android, it will be better for Nintendo, because it's a better OS than anything Nintendo wants for their hardware. 

Top of the class OSs are irrelevant here. Like the customized chipsets that go into the hardware, the OS is virtually always specifically tailored to the overall platform based upon the requirements and desires of the company.

XB ran an OS based upon Windows, as did the XB360 and the XBO, because it was their platform, their OS and they weren't paying Windows licensing fees to themselves. Why wouldn't Microsoft do this?

Whether Nintendo wanted to start from scratch, use segments of code from the Wii U, run Android or even start with a stripped down, bare bones version of Android is entirely up to their whims. 

Again, Nintendo does what they want.