That's the rumour. With AMD it's certainly possible. They could even go for some sort of docked system that unlocks proccessing when plugged in for console use.

It's comforting to know you are always here to educate me, Soundwave :P It's funny you act like I don't get Nintendo needs to save resources: Of course they do and that's exactly why I think they'll do what I said in my original post. So to clarify I will list some ways in which Nintendo can save resources (and not have to "increase their workforce by 2x-3x") by having two architectually similar platforms - only in my humble opinion, of course:

- Virtual Console games will run on both platforms with one programming effort (resources needed cut by almost 50%) 

- Game engines that can be modified and used between both platforms

- Not having to learn coding "from scratch" twice (this is what Iwata has been saying multiple times)

- Cross-Releases for some games (when it makes sense. Some games are better suited for a home console only, etc.)

- Maximising productivity of their workforce: Programmers can code for both platforms without needing special training

They can even use some sort of framework for less demanding games: Program it once and use the framework to make it run on both platforms, instead of having to develop two native versions. Couple that with a unified account system and Nintendo's plans to integrate their software teams instead of having them do stuff seperately and that's a lot of resources saved. They also talked a lot about "collaborations" and I assume that means partnering up with external development studios to increase game output. 

I don't claim I know the truth, I'm just speculating. I assume your solution would be a Fusion console, right? But Nintendo never talked about a "Fusion" console and they don't have any plans to kill off either their home console or handheld line, so I assume they are going to maximise their game output by taking the aforementioned steps. It's perfectly fine if you disagree and think I have no idea what I'm talking about. But I distinctly remember when Nintendo talked openly about "Blue Ocean Strategy" and "Disruptive Products" and "Fun and motion in our next home console like you've never seen before" and instead of taking Nintendo's words at face value the internet speculated about all kinds of crazy things. In the end Nintendo was hiding its strategy in plain sight. 

But there is a difference between catering to 3rd party and completely ignoring them. I'm not saying that Nintendo abandons the family market. That would be a bad idea. But making their hardware so that 3rd parties can easily port their games to their system is smart. If Nintendo decides to completely abandon 3rd party, then most likely they will never come back. This will make it so Nintendo ends up on their own again, and then we will be back in the Wii U area again.

In one of Reggie's statements, he slips and says that NX is a home console.

Just to ads to this, Sony tried a similar approach with Vita and PS4 development environments. Obviously this hasn't worked so well for them due to having a generally weaker handheld offering, but I could see Nintendo making it work.

Sharing development environments with the potentially added bonus of having similar architectures on both console and handheld systems that can scale quite easily from the developers perspective should help cut costs.

Actually the quote on this from the late Iwata-san is fairly vague. He mentions there could be multiple SKUs, but then he mentions in the same quote that they may only need one singular device. We have no idea which direction they ultimately landed on. 

I kinda hope Nintendo just ditches AMD to be honest.

PowerVR can give them better performance per watt at likely a lower price.

The GT7900 could give them 800 GFLOPS on the console variant at under 10 watts and can scale up even further if they want. A mobile version of the same chip could be in the 400 GFLOP range for 5-6 watts and give them a very powerful handheld.

I doubt AMD can beat those performance ratios, if they could they would be making GPUs for tablets/phones and be a big player in that scene, but they're not.

Make smart decisions with the hardware, IBM/AMD sure as heck aren't helping Nintendo now, they're stuck with a bloated custom design that they can't lower the price on. Use a more mainstream vendor like PowerVR IMO. They make the Apple iPhone/iPad GPUs so you know they operate on a huge mass production scale.

Yeesh. Sorry.
I'm not into this whole in depth, heavy, console manufacturing as you guys are. So pardon me for asking a question about a thing or two that I don't really know about.

But AMD is not only about consoles.

Any PC or laptop out there is powered by either an Intel or an AMD processor, and any PC with a graphics card has one from either Nvidia or AMD (formerly known as ATI).

That's why it's hard to believe that you never heard of it before.

NX will certainly have much more 3rd party friendly architecture, they will have better devs kits and better communication with them than when they launch Wii U, we already have that information that Nintendo showed hardware to 3rd party at E3. I think Nintendo will do what they can to bring 3rd party on NX (expect strong hardware and to give them money), will that be enough we will see, but certainly dont expect full 3rd party support but at least it will be better support than on Wii U.