Several separate leaks suggest Nintendo is gearing up to launch brand new hardware at E3 2014 in June.
Potentially the follow-on to the struggling Nintendo Wii U or successful Nintendo 3DS handheld, Nintendo apparently has some big hardware news for us next month.
Citing multiple sources, IGN believes Nintendo will “absolutely” reveal new hardware at the LA-based gaming conference, although doesn’t “know what that means” in terms of what hardware form that will take.
“They’re absolutely going to show new hardware this year,” said IGN’s Peer Schneider, during a podcast. “There’s no doubt in my mind because I’ve heard it from multiple people now. I’ve heard it from someone who used to be at Nintendo, I’ve heard it from somebody on the third-party front.”
Supporting this fresh rumour is a separately “third-party publishing” sourced report from VideoGamer that the upcoming hardware announcement could link to leaked tech specs from earlier this year.
These leaked specs were supposedly linked to two brand new Nintendo consoles named the Fusion DS and Fusion Terminal, potentially the Wii U and 3DS successors.
Apparently, these new consoles will offer playable games at E3 this year, but of course Nintendo has declined to comment on “rumour and speculation”.
Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata claimed the company’s next consoles will take a leaf out of Apple’s iOS book, by making them share a unified development platform.
"Currently, we can only provide two form factors because if we had three or four different architectures, we would face serious shortages of software on every platform", said Iwata. “Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS.”
He also noted the same properties are found with Google’s Android OS.
"The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples."
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