Nintendo NX: New Patent Suggests That The Console Won’t Have An Optical Drive

Although we know more about Nintendo’s NX console than one would think, a lot about it still remains an enigma, with only speculation based on Nintendo’s stated goals for the console guiding our thinking as to what it could be. However, a new patent filing made by Nintendo for the console may be our clearest look yet at what Nintendo is planning for the system.

The new patent filed by Nintendo appears to be for a disc less home console- that is, it appears to be a home console without any kind of disc drive whatsoever. The console instead has an in built, embedded hard drive. One could presume that this would imply an all digital console, which at the best of times would be a disaster, but with Nintendo at the helm would be nothing short of a catastrophe, but there is an interesting wrinkle thrown into the mix- a slot for a ‘memory card;’ this in turn seems to imply that the console is running games off of… flash memory cards. Which would be cartridges. Not N64 era cartridges, but modern cartridges of the kind that is in the 3DS or Vita.

This would have some very interesting implications- a console with cartridges could have scaling licensing fees for third party games, and could potentially offer storage spaces more than even Blu Rays (since modern flash memory can go as high as 512GB). Is this, then, our look at what Nintendo has planned for the NX? We won’t know until Nintendo unveils it themselves properly next year, but for now, the possibilities presented to us are intriguing.