I doubt it's VR. Reggie was still quite cold on it recently. VR also still has issues with making people dizzy/sick, doubt that'll go over too well with kids. Mom and dad finding out little Davey puked all over the carpet because he was playing Pokemon VR too long isn't a good look. 

Something like a mobile game console/terminal with some kind of wacky controller that encourages people to gather around and play together is probably more in Nintendo's ally. That's just my guess though.

I'm glad I'm not the only person who thinks this. It's been crossing my mind lately. I find it believe that Nintendo is so tight-lipped and hasn't shared the secret with a single third party pub/dev that Sony and MS can't just call and get a clue about.

I just hope that "idea" doesn't translate to "dumb gimmick that we're going to shoehorn onto most games". I appreciate that Nintendo likes to keep it fresh and try to do new things. But seriously, the world does not need more control gimmicks.

If Nintendo's SCD module really works as described in the patent, it could kinda be both.  That would be a gimmick far more advantageous in the long run than any new-fangled controller, and while NX wouldn't match Neo or Scorpio on a pure tech level, the SCD can connect (even peer to peer) with other SCDs to use the power of the network to enhance games considerably.  Remember that the SCD has CPU and GPU processing abilities.

My guess is that a base handheld unit would be just powerful enough to run modern games at a lower resolution.  Definitely not XB1 in raw power, but able to share the same library, with the console variant closer to PS4 in power.  Again, it's the SCD that would be doing all the magic to make games run at a PS4+ level.

A "Nintendo cloud" that includes your uncompromised gaming experience, account and social media all together could indeed be pretty spectacular.  It's just up to Nintendo how they handle it and make it easy to understand to the user.

I really don't believe why people are thinking it's VR. Nintendo always focused on cheaper hardware to attend a bigger market. The cheapest VR combo right now is PS4 + PSVR, and that will be close to 700 bucks at launch. VR also lacks maturity and has a massive chance to flop. Even Sony isn't putting all their money on it and have a plan B of pushing 4K + HDR with the Neo.

I'm starting to believe in the unified platform thing. If we look at the new consoles by Sony/MS, it seems like with the right dev tools it isn't hard to support a weaker and a stronger unit at the same time. Nintendo could use a stronger unit (regular PS4 power) as the home console and pair it with a weaker portable console. The only problems I see here are:
- Media: Blu-rays are cheap, but won't work on a portable. Could they use cartridges? The cards used on Vita and 3DS won't fit more than 8GB, so it's a big gap to the 50GB BDs. Maybe it could be digital only.
- Portable hardware: Tegra is weak and is the best we have for mobile. Could they use x86 in a portable? If they want an unified platform, they need similar hardware. I doubt that AMD has a APU that could go portable like that.

Anyway, if they figured it out, it would be a hit. Even if buying both could be a bit expensive, it wouldn't be mandatory, so you could just buy one and get the other some time later. If it is that, I'm buying the portable day 1 and the home unit less than a year later.

Totaly agree. About 3rd party suport, its almost certain that PS4/XB1 will get suport for same time like PS4Neo/Xbox Scorpio because both Sony and MS told 3rd party must make same games for bouth consoles, instale base of PS4/XB1 will definatly be mush stronger than for PS4Neo/Xbox Scorpio, and Yoshida said that PS4 Neo is just upgraded PS4 and that we will have PS5 when is time and that means PS4/PS4Neo will be replaced in same time. So if NX have similar power to XB1/PS4, similar or hard architecture for porting and dont have catastrophic sales like Wii U, NX could get solid 3rd party support for same time like XB1/PS4.

Fresh from Nintendo’s 76th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders:

1. NX still coming March 2017, no delay as of yet.
2. NX most definitely no VR, there were several questions about VR, they said again that they are watching & experimenting for now.
3. Miyamoto said: "Normally we would’ve shown the #NX at #E3, but we didn’t. We’re worried about imitators if we release info too early."

Just as they implied earlier, there is some big special idea in the NX and after having everything they did in the last generations copied imediatly Nintendo is tired of that shit.
I'm just hoping its truly a good idea and not just some damn gimmick nobody wants.
Let's hope they thought it through and learned the right lessons.

source

If MS couldn't pull cloud, I doubt Nintendo will be able. They barely have a network compatible with PSN and even less Live.

And that would be a blessing for gamers that really love Nintendo games and could save 350usd in HW and put on the 3rd party they would like to play.

The copy of Wii Mote wasn't that fast and wasn't the cause of their late struggles with Wii, and by reverse engineering of HW if MS or Sony really want to copy they wouldn't take long, Kinect and Move used very different approaches for motion control and infact were a lot better, but didn't had the same strenght. Patent can't be copied, they are worried about the concept.

That definitely doesn't mean that NX later can't have VR addon. Fact that they experimenting with VR basically means they working on VR. We still don't know anything about NX, they wouldnt said that NX has VR even if actually that is a case.

As far as I know, Microsoft was still going for traditional cloud tech relying on a massive server farm where the loss of electricity over distance is a crippling factor.  With Nintendo's SCD, it's like breaking the server farm up and spreading it out to where people with poor connections can link up to others with better connections.  So it's a different way of going about cloud processing.  Whether or not Nintendo can pull it off remains to be seen.