Does sound like a very Nintendo-ey thing to do though. Maybe it'll be cheap or an accessorie. 

Would be good when travelling with the unit and suddenly you want to play with friends but there's no TV around. 

If that projector is the gimmick, will it then have a big drag on the price?
The cheaper the gimmick, the better for Nintendo's bottom line.

Woah! Now that might bring back some casuals I think. And it'll fit with "take your games anwyhere" that Eurogamer has been saying. Maybe the projector has settings that allow you to see perfectly no matter what the lighting condition. NX probably won't be anything like this but it's fun to speculate and see where it could go.

The projector could be an interesting gimmick. It's not something I would necessarily use too often, but it's still pretty cool.

Projectors are typically very expensive or low resolution and low lifespan.... I'm not buying the NX will have an inbuilt projector for a single moment.

I avoid patents as an indication of what Nintendo is going to do in the future like a plague, though the detachable controller thing at least may happen.

I don't think so at all, being able to natively run android applications on your system instantly opens it up to piracy. Nintendo couldn't keep piracy away from the 3ds/WiiU for more than a couple of years with their own OS from scratch. An OS capable of running android apps natively, or based on Android will open the door for homebrew and piracy pretty much day one.

Depends, anything is a threat for piracy.

Nintendo can customize things heavily. 

The upside is simply too good to ignore .... Nintendo getting a 30% cut of all app revenue on NX could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in profits for them (they'd also get 100% of all profit from their own apps). App revenue is also important because if (heaven forbid) the system has third parties bail out on it like Wii U, Nintendo would still have a steady source of licensing fee revenue from apps, since kids aren't going to stop downloading those. 

You don't really even have to prevent piracy you simply need to make it hard enough so that "average joe" won't bother with it. 

 I just can't imagine a way that the NX could take advantage of Android Apps and remain beneficial to Nintendo. A 30% cut would imply that other android stores won't be able to run on the device, if Android applications can run natively then Google Play, Amazon App Store etc will run natively. It's too exploitable, and the more you try to patch up the potential holes in the idea the more work developers have to put in to port their game to NX negating the entire point of using android in the first place.

You can have a system capable of Natively running all android applications, getting the benefit of an instant library of games, however completely opening the door for third-party stores (google/amazon/other) and basically giving hackers and pirates a key from day one. You can have a heavily modified version of android that is at best semi-secure but cannot run all android applications natively off the bat, meaning you may succeed in only running your own store but developers are going to have to put their games on NX specifically case by case, and likely the hackers and pirates will be kept at bay for 3-12 months.

Alternatively they could create their own OS not based on Android. Create a system that is very easy to develop for and as such strongly encourages android developers to port their games to it anyway, maintain complete control of the OS and keep the system safe from software exploits for 3 - infinite years.

I just really don't see Android working out for Nintendo and I would be very very surprised if they went down that route.

The upside is lots of $$$$ for Nintendo and lots of functionality that Nintendo doesn't have to waste time with. Why for example spend time making a video player for kids to watch cartoons on, when Android has several suitable ones. Nintendo isn't good at making those types of apps or functionality. 

The functionality this device would have with Android app support would go a long way in justifying maybe a higher $250-$300 price point. 

I don't see a third party store though. It would be all through a Nintendo eShop. Nintendo can then also control which apps are available and which aren't. 

For the app developer they can simply just get their already existing Android app "approved" by Nintendo. But if you ask them to make a seperate version of their app ... no dice. Tell me how many devs bother making Windows Phone or Blackberry versions of apps ... Nintendo would likely fare even worse if they asked for ports to a custom OS. Now you have kids who don't want to use the device over their iPad because it doesn't have all the apps they love. This is the problem.

There's actually quite a few games on Android that would be pretty good with physical controls too, the implications to Nintendo's library would be fairly large in that case IMO. There would never be a lack of anything to play, EA/Bethesda/Rockstar etc. could all go get bent. 

There is some risk of some people being able to hack the device, but that exists regardless of OS. Just make it so difficult that the average person doesn't bother. If some 2-3% niche of your userbase wants to hack the device to get free Android apps, so be it. 

It's a patent. The final product would likely look much different.