In March, Nintendo announced that information on their next hardware platform, currently codenamed NX, would be revealed in 2016. Since then, everyone has been trying to get the notoriously tight-lipped company to open up about the system. Even President Satoru Iwata isn’t immune, as he had to remind shareholders that he wouldn’t be discussing the NX multiple times during the company’s recent annual meeting.
Yesterday, DigiTimes went one better and revealed that Nintendo has asked their manufacturing partners to begin production on a pilot run of NX components beginning this October, “at the latest.” The outlet’s source believes that final orders will be placed early next year with mass production of the system set to begin by May or June. The source added that a July 2016 launch for the NX “may” be possible.
DigiTimes believes that Nintendo wants to ship 20 million NX systems in its first year of a availability, which would be more than any previous home console. This number seems like a rather high estimate as the Wii U has yet to reach that number after three years on the market.
The schedule sounds a bit insane to me (The Legend of Zelda Wii U might not even be out by July 2016), but if it is true, I trust that Nintendo knows what they’re doing.
