Over the last month, many have been taking the recent leak regarding the upcoming Nintendo NX console to be true. According to the leak, the NX will be a particularly powerful hybrid console – a handheld device with the ability to dock and output video to a television set. If this is true, the NX is set to be the first console-handheld hybrid device of its kind. If these rumors prove to be indeed true, the NX is certainly one of the more appealing and exciting consoles set to release in the next year.
However, what if the rumors were in fact false? According to job listings posted by Nintendo recently, this may just be the case.
Two marketing leads for Nintendo?
Recent job listings from Nintendo seem to suggest that the rumors suggesting a handheld-console hybrid might be false. There are currently two job listings in particular that support this claim: a listing for a Lead Marketer for Handhelds, and another for Lead Marketer for Home Consoles.
The thing to take note of here is that Nintendo is hiring two completely separate marketing leads: one for consoles and one for handhelds. This obviously doesn’t make much sense if Nintendo plans to release the NX as one singular hybrid device. Additionally, the system’s main selling point, if the hybrid rumors prove to be true, is that the system has the best of both worlds: all Nintendo games on one system, all Nintendo games at home, and all Nintendo games on the go.
The implication that is being made with these two separate marketing lead job postings is that one wouldn’t need two for both aspects of the company, if the system is indeed intended to be sold as a hybrid. There also isn’t a need to pitch two separate systems to retail partners, as the NX would be one singular Nintendo product.
The Nintendo NX plot thickens
Why would Nintendo want to have two marketing leads in the first place? This would suggest that the initial idea that people had for the Nintendo NX – “that it is not a home console or a handheld, but a common hardware platform, with separate devices, in home console and handheld form factors,” as Gamingbolt.com describes – might indeed be the case.
Consider what Nintendo’s late president Satoru Iwata once said while describing the NX:
Home consoles and handheld devices will no longer be completely different, and they will become like brothers in a family of systems. Still, I am not sure if the form factor (the size and configuration of the hardware) will be integrated. In contrast, the number of form factors might increase. 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.
Taking this comment into consideration, it seems that either Nintendo changed the plans for the NX console after this statement was made, or that Iwata was being deliberately misleading in his statement. However, if this wasn’t the case, is this what Nintendo has been planning for the system all along? How does this make sense with the plethora of NX leaks that came out recently?
With official announcement soon, facts to come
If the leaks speculating that the NX was both a home console and a handheld were true, then what might have leaked was the handheld NX. While the handheld NX might be everything the leaks say it is, it may not be the only NX system. There might indeed still be a NX home console, though that still remains to be seen.
What will the Nintendo NX turn out to be? One can only speculate, but with these rumors and leaks, the hype is certainly building. With the official announcement expected sometime next month, we will find out what the NX is soon enough.
