Nintendo Refutes Android on NX Report

[Steven Bogos]

Nintendo Refutes Android on NX Report

Nintendo claims there is no truth in the report [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140996-Nintendos-NX-Will-Run-Android-Report] that its new console will run Android.

Earlier this week, we received a report from a fairly reputable Japanese business newspaper that Nintendo was Wall Street Journal [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/140996-Nintendos-NX-Will-Run-Android-Report] quite definitively that the report is false.

"There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX," a Nintendo spokesman told the journal. The report stated that the company was going to use Android in order to speed up getting all game developers on board, as well as better encourage cross-platform development.

While this does seem pretty definitive, you have to remember that Nintendo also rather definitively denied the last major rumor reported from by Nikkei, and well, we saw how that turned out... [http://time.com/3748920/nintendo-mobile-games/].

It certainly does make a lot of sense for Nintendo to use an Android-base for its new console, especially with the big mobile push Nintendo has recently adopted, as well as its historically poor third-party support.

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

Source: Wall Street Journal [http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/02/will-nintendos-nx-adopt-android-company-says-no/]

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[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I wonder if the NX will be backwards compatible with the Wii U.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Well... Um, yeah, I guess... But it's easy to get crossed wires here.

If they're trying to do mobile development, having android around makes perfect sense. However, it doesn't immediately follow that they're developing an actual android-based console.

And honestly? I'd have my doubts that it's such a brilliant idea anyway.
High performance android hardware is pretty weak when you put it up against actual desktop stuff.

For laughs, I compared the results of the Ice Storm demo on my tablet compared to My PC.

The tablet is a Galaxy note 8, with your typical Mali-400 GPU. Which isn't exactly top of the line for a tablet or phone, but it gives a rough comparison.

My PC is getting on a bit, consisting as it does of a Core i5- 750 (quad core @ 2.66 ghz) and a Radeon 5770 gpu...

Even so...
The gap might not look huge when you see them run the benchmarks...
But the tablet sometimes struggled to get double-digit framerates on 'ice storm', and scored roughly 3300 points give or take. It averaged something like 15 fps.

My PC, running the same thing scored 89,000 , and ran the tests in some cases breaking 700 fps, and averaging over 500 fps at a minimum in all the graphics tests, (and over 130 in the physics tesst)

Now, yes, mobile devices can get up into the 20-30,000 point range.
But... My hardware is going on 6 years old now, and you can bet there's stuff with 10x the performance now, (without even getting into multi-gpu setups)...

Why does any of this matter? Because android is closely tied to the ARM cpu's and related architectures that go with it in the mobile space.
Sure, if you build a console you can wring a bit of extra performance out of them, but the gap is pretty huge.
And maybe, you can implement it on a different kind of architecture...
But at that point, is it worth it?

I very much doubt, given what nintendo has faced with the Wii U that they really want a repeat of that. Or at least, they don't want to make the apparent performance gap between their console and those of the others to be even more absurdly large than it already has been so far...

Seems like a silly idea, regardless of the rumours.

 

[CrazyBlaze]

Is there anyone who actually really believed that? I can see them using Android as something to learn from and to see what works but I doubt that it would be for actual use.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

And this is why you should just wait until Nintendo reveals something because as we have seen rumors about them are bogus.

 

[marioandsonic]

And this is why you should just wait until Nintendo reveals something because as we have seen rumors about them are bogus.

The weeks leading up to E3 are always filled with rumors and theories about the industry.

During this time, I try to take all gaming-related rumors with massive piles of salt.

 

[09philj]

Nintendo tend to play their cards close to their chest, so speculating is mostly a waste of time.

 

[DrOswald]

I wonder if the NX will be backwards compatible with the Wii U.

Probably. Nintendo cares a lot about backwards compatibility, they have made sure to include it in every system they possibly can.

 

[azurine]

"We swear we're not up to any shenanigans!"
"Please don't be excited!"

Yeah, sure Nintendo, we'll believe you when you never make an Android system.