Nintendo Unveils New ‘NX’ Console, Mobile Games Intiative, And A Steam-Like Service

Nintendo is joining the mobile gaming platform and is also going to be bringing a new console, codenamed “NX.” These details came to light earlier this morning at a press conference talking about a new partnership between Nintendo and Japanese mobile games giant DeNA. Nintendo talked about how the company wants to finally get into the mobile games business after Nintendo has shunned the platform for the last few years.

Perhaps the biggest piece of news from Nintendo’s announcement is that the games brought to the mobile platform won’t just be reskins of Mario or Legend of Zelda. While those games might eventually be brought to mobile by Nintendo, the company is going to be looking at new IPs in this partnership. In fact, it appears Nintendo is still very much against bringing any of its old titles to mobile. Nintendo and DeNA both said that “only new original games optimized for smart device functionality will be created, rather than porting games created specifically for the Wii U home console or the Nintendo 3DS portable system,” Engadget reported.

The partnership between Nintendo and DeNA is a complicated one. Nintendo will buy a 10 percent stake in the mobile games giant while DeNA will also be taking a 1.24 percent ownership of Nintendo. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the partnership between DeNa and Nintendo is a planned online membership service that will mimic Steam. This service will span across all of Nintendo’s platforms, including the Wii U, the 3DS, PC, smartphones and tablets.

While Nintendo’s announcement of the mobile games initiative and the Steam-like service is big news, the real bombshell might have been the unveiling of a new console. There have certainly been a number of rumors that the company wanted to eventually replace the Wii U, but until today there wasn’t any confirmation. As Dual Shockers reports, there isn’t much known about the console, which is codenamed “NX.” The company made it clear it wasn’t ready to really talk about this next generation device, and more won’t really be known until next year.

Of course, it’s also possible the announcement was timed to soften the ground a few months ahead of E3. Could we be learning something more about what appears to be a direct competitor to the PS4 and Xbox One this year? Probably, because it’s going to be hard for Nintendo to just not talk about the NX for the next nine months.

[Lead image via The Verge.]