This might be painful to play with if you'll have to look down all the time. Text necks abound.

Oval screen is weirding me out yo.

Man, this idea seems pretty sweet actually. Interested to see if it leads to anything.

I'm not really interested in using virtual buttons to play handheld games and I can't imagine sliding the stick around and clicking them is going to be very easy to accomplish during intense gameplay. I don't even know how that would work if you were trying to jump or something in Mario. A whole handheld based around a touchscreen does not sound right for me. I have a phone for that.

Looks neat, but im tired of gimmicks... Am i the only one who would love to see Nintendo just bite the bullet and fall in line with Sony and Microsoft? I mean... id love to just have a nintendo platform that is powerful enough to run multi-plats and have a traditional controller. I feel like Nintendo is chasing the highs of the Wii perpetually and handicapping themselves in the process.

I imagine this would be a nightmare for UI designers, or anyone porting games from other systems.

I really hope this isn't the NX. It looks dumb and pointless. The Wii U gamepad, smartphones, and tablets already offer touchscreen gameplay, we don't need more.

If this is a new controller for the NX, I imagine it would be very expensive, and Nintendo has never gone that route before, but who knows.

I'm still betting the NX is a VR headset that will differentiate itself by having its own processing power and not need to be linked to a console or computer. That way it would be the only mobile VR headset on the market. The graphics would have to be simplistic, and you'd have to be plugged in constantly, but it could work.

@kevin_cogneto: lmao!! Nice one, man.

What happens with VR I think will be vastly more interesting than the new NX, I love me some Nintendo, but the Wii U was uninspired after what I genuinely thought, and still do, was a very innovative product in the Wii. It captured the imagination of people, as well it should've, even if you didn't have to do the gestures, doing them still worked. Anyways, I didn't really read the article to be honest, I'll wait till E3 to let Nintendo tell me what the hell they are actually doing, with that sick new mascot.

SA - KA - TA *dances*

Sure

I'm actually hoping that even if this isn't the NX, they do something a little more out there than "PS4 or Xbox One, but with a cuter UI"

As much as my Wii U is little more than a Splatoon and Mario Maker box right now, I'm glad that it exists.

I'm all for innovation and differentiation, but God, the last two Nintendo consoles have been unconventional and the last four Nintendo consoles have been poorly-supported. I just want a little respit from the endless "supplementary system" hole Nintendo has found themselves in with me. I just want one traditional, serious console (in terms of third-party perception) from them now. Then they can go back to being weirdos.

Hm, I suspect the screen on this thing is meant to be secondary to a living room display, and I doubt the shape of the thing in the diagrams is final. Also, I could imagine physical buttons being added to the design gradually, possibly with LED or e-ink displays on them.

I recall seeing a stick+buttons harness attachment for smartphones in a news article recently, which I still think is the sort of possibility that jumps out when I think about where the Wii U failed: they correctly predicted the emergence of tablet devices, but their technology was quickly obsoleted by sleeker, more sophisticated and less clunky phones and tablets. By producing a controller harness that wraps a phone or tablet (and assuming they can get the bandwidth for a decent-quality video feed from a console onto the phone/tablet), their controller gets better as the consumer plows through successive tablet models.

They might then go with three controller models: firstly, they could build a default screen unit that comes with the harness, and just runs Nintendo firmware; secondly as noted, the harness could also attach to a typical phone or tablet, which would have a Nintendo firmware app installed on it (er, Apple permitting...?); and finally, they could enable phones and tablets to function as controllers without the harness, via the Nintendo app and digital sticks/buttons.

Going in this direction they can consolidate their Wii U and DS libraries on the NX platform. The Nintendo firmware app on the phone/controller could also be the basis for portable NX gaming to succeed the 3DS, which might bring Nintendo's new mobile gaming strategy under its wing. It also implicitly puts the NX in the emerging Jackbox Games-style game space.

if this is just a controller and developers can put whatever they want on the face that's awesome

I find virtual buttons to be worthless for anything that requires finesse or accurate response. For turn based gaming it's fine, but outside of that I find myself consistently frustrated. I hope this isn't the direction they go down.

An idea was mentioned recently on one of the podcasts (Beastcast #38?) about having a system that was basically a combination of the 3DS and Wii-U. Handheld gaming is really popular in Japan, and the ability to play on the go then upscale when you get home is pretty neat. Or just having half the feature that we assumed the Wii-U would have in the first place.

Ah, well. Nintendo has survived this long. I'm sure they have some idea what they're doing.

I have no idea why you'd want an oval screen where the edges will be constantly covered by the joysticks/your hands anyway. Aesthetically it looks like a cheap toy, so maybe they're going that route with it? Assuming this is actually a project they're following through on.

@ripelivejam: Its not our prerogative to know what we want(tho it should be). Its our place to buy what we like or not buy. People loved the Wii for what it was but obviously the WiiU did not resonate. Nintendo can make the most out there product in the history of gaming, does not mean the consumer will respond. There is nothing wrong with that.

As we're talking about patents here and not even a prototype, I don't think that the pictures showing an ellipse shaped screen mean that it has to be an ellipse shaped screen?

I bet that it won't be an elliptical screen.

Listen, just make a fucking new gamecube okay?!

more like closing my wallet again

This is interesting, but I just don't think a solely dual-stick setup like this would control very well.
They should make that controller, with that big elliptical touch screen, and with the sticks having the potential to select things from the touch-screen... but they should also add in a d-pad and buttons like they have on the Classic Controller.

I would play that game with that little character in the patents haha. I wanna see some next-gen-blowin'-up-giant-iguanas tech.

@dudeglove: Whatchu mean?

Looks neat, but if this is a handheld first and console second I'm out till the second revision.

If this is a full touch control without any analog option like a cellphone it could be a disaster. Similarly the new Steam controller tried to reinvent controls along with bringing PC controls but fails to do either one very well. While one could argue that after sometime with the controller you can get used to it, nevertheless, at no time does it feel 100% good like a traditional PC control scheme or standard console controller.

I need Giant Iguana Hunter as a game now.

This looks just like my Vita with the handgrips I bought.

"Expressionless and fleeing alone through a desolate world on an unpredictable road. Finally, a mascot for the millennial generation. I'm so on board."

Also a pretty apt representation of being a Nintendo fan in 2015.

@donpixel: there! That's the blind cynicism i expect with anything nintendo related!

wonder why...

I mean is not like there is an arbitrary moral obligation to receive positively everything they do, is it?

This is how i imagined how the wiiU controller will look like. A normally sized controller with a touchscreen between face buttons and d-pad but Nintendo were like "No! You are getting a whole tablet".

@redhotchilimist: i'm willing to bet that you will need an accessory or accessories to make it portable and become able to play DS games.

It's just a patent which could mean just about anything. Nothing to get worked up over because there is no way of knowing what this is intended for other than just Nintendo securing ideas which a lot of companies already do.

Any person who is actually having a guttural reaction from a patent are probably over reacting a little bit.

Knowing Nintendo this is probably gonna be amazing and we just don't get it yet. And no one else will. Nintendo will make games that work on it and you will feel " Oh! I get it now!"

The concept makes me think "gamepad that doesnt need to be near a Wii U to work"

Going to get buried in the comments but here's an idea: just because it's an elliptical screen doesn't mean the whole screen will be used. A 16:9 screen can still exist, and the rest is used as a digital gamepad, displaying buttons / joysticks depending on the game.

Wait, if it needs to be plugged in constantly, how can it be a "mobile VR headset"? ;)
Imho that doesn't sound like Nintendo at all, usually they don't just "follow the trends", they are trying to break out of the crowd. What you describe sounds at best like a Nintendo version of Samsung VR, at worst it could be Virtual Boy 2.0.

If they just of regular touch screen button on the controller I can't see that doing very well. I wonder how such a controller would do if Nintendo used technology like/from Tactus .

I think something like might be interesting; only problem with that is the fact that a lot of enthusiast controllers are moving towards keeping both thumbs on the sticks and adding more inputs on the bottom of the controller (paddles, grip buttons, mouse wheels).

Tactus

I do not want to look at my controller to play my game. Period. Just not something I care to do. That's what handhelds are for.

If this is meant to be a handheld, THEN I'm interested.

More of Austin's great writing, can't get enough.

If this is truly what Nintendo is going to make their flagship system or the direction they want to go then I can't see Nintendo continuing to function as a hardware developer in the long term.

This will simply alienate 3rd party developers even further which any console will need to survive in between first party releades. Nobody will want to waste funds on developing for something so obscure when two more viable platforms are on the market. Innovation is great in increments that make sense. However, if this is the nx and Nintendo is doubling down on the single thing people hated the most about their last system one has to wonder just how out of touch they are.