This was pointed out on NeoGaf, but this news makes *a lot* of sense ...

http://www.hardwareluxx.com/index.php/news/general/economy/38820-tsmc-releases-earnings-and-10-nm-design-for-games-consoles.html

TSMC is a manfacturer of chipsets, they currently are a hardware vendor for Nintendo, supplying the eDRAM for the Wii U. 

They mentioned just a few days ago that they are prepping a 10nm FinFET process for 2017 ... this would be ridiculously low power, but it gets more interesting here:

The tape out of the first chip in the 10FF process (10 nm FinFET) was successful in the first quarter of this year. Mass production in this process will ramp up in the second quarter 2017. Needless to say, TSMC kept its lips sealed about any possible customers for the node. TSMC CEO Mark Liu did, however, speak of a console design that will rely on this new process. As nothing else was said, one can wildly speculate what Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo are up to something behind sealed doors.

10nm is ridiculously low power draw ... which console maker would possibly need a 10nm chip? 10nm is something that really only a portable would need ... so, uh NINTENDO? 

If Nintendo is aiming for 10nm for the portable NX ... suddenly a lot of things make sense, like why haven't we heard anything about the portable NX and why is the console NX coming first? Well if the portable NX is 10nm, that means it can't begin mass production until mid-2017 ... that may explain why it seems like we're getting console NX this fall (apparently) first. 

14nm Polaris for the console and 10nm Polaris stripped down for a portable ... that would be very, very, very interesting. 

I don't think they're going to have separate releases or be separate things. I think they're going to come out in 2017, and be one unified system. I think Pikmin 4 and Zelda U will probably be the last "big" releases for Wii U.

10nm, LOL ...

Intel will be the first one with it in the 2nd half of 2017, I doubt TSMC will be able to ship any products using their 10nm process for at least 6 months compared to Intel and that's with INFERIOR density ...

They're saying they have a client for consoles though ... who in the world could need 10nm for a game system? Nintendo is the only one that would seem to fit. 

If you're making a portable that needs to be able to play versions of full blown console games ... you need the best possible performance per watt. 

Depending on their definition of a "game console" they could be talking about the new Nvidia SHIELD products ... 

It definitely isn't Sony. I don't think they'll make another handheld anytime soon. It might be the NX portable supplementary device or NX portable device. Whatever the rumors point to. Microsoft, nah, they're focused on tablets and phones... It has to be Nintendo. Unless we're getting a Gamecom 2.

Nvidia uses Samsung now though I think they dropped TSMC, even so, I don't see why a Shield console would need 10nm, 14nm would be more than good enough. 

No they didn't! TSMC is happily manufacturing the enormous Pascal GP100 dies for Nvidia as we are speaking ...  

BTW, Nvidia has the SHIELD portable too so they do need to get a lower power to be competitive ... 

Could be Nvidia but I'm thinking it's Nintendo. Even the Shield products haven't used the absolute cutting edge, the Shield console uses 20nm for example instead of 14nm. 

Nvidia didn't want to use 14nm from Samsung because of political reasons or Samsung's priority to manufacture their own S6 phones and plus the Tegra X1 was a relatively new design at the time only recently taped out then so it made sense to reuse it for their Shield console ...