Which Nintendo device has significantly superior 3rd party support? The one that uses game carts, there goes ur shafting 3rd party theory.

Not only have western AAA never been big movers but they have been borderline irrelevant for Nintendo. GameCube & Wii U had much better multiplat support than Wii from the big western publishers yet they are still Nintendo's 2 worst selling consoles by a wide margin. The last time u could argue AAA western titles having an impact on Nintendo was during the N64 days which ironically used cartridges.

Wonder what this will be, if it will ever be used..

You have a point. At first i would have been against digital only, but after reading this thread and you and others points it wouldnt be so bad.

There is a rumour that Nintendo's next console will come in two different forms: One will have the optical disc drive, and the other will be digital only.
The digital only version will be the cheaper option due to the fact it has less going on under the hood.

I find it interesting that a patent is filed for a Wii U revision without an optical drive but with an internal hard drive in its place and everyone thinks it's NX. I do think this Wii U Lite seems cool though.

So it seems that NX is a console after all since http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/thread.php?id=212998&page=2#4 are going to produce cards for this year and this patent shows cards used in a home console.

As I said before, NX will be a cloud machine

So it won't need something like catridge/disc game

I think you're right, this patent does not speak of a console , the device is a server , I think Nintendo will launch in community cloud with cloud mining system

but you're wrong , Nintendo can not make 100% online , they have too much to lose, amiibos goodies ... a cartridge / license where the game would remain after download is a better solution