Nintendo has just filed a patent for a console without a disc drive. There is a strong chance this console is referring to the Nintendo NX.
The official US Patent & Trademark Office website shows that Nintendo has filed for new hardware that doesn’t require an optical disc drive.
The abstract says the console has an internal hard disk drive. This is normal as many console these days comes with their own hard drive built in. The latter part of the abstract are where things get interesting. It says the “example system is not provided with an optical disk drive for reading out a program and/or data from an optical disk.”
Whether or not this is for the Nintendo NX console or another device remains to be seen. It’s likely it’s for the NX since that is the only console Nintendo has announced that is getting developed right now.
Microsoft nearly wanted to make the Xbox One without a disc drive as well. They changed their mind since not everyone likes to download large 50GB or so games all of the time. Thankfully, a Blu-ray disc drive was added in.
It will be interesting if the Nintendo NX console goes all-digital. Unless they plan to utilize another way to distribute games like a memory card or cartridge of some sort. It would be easier to combat piracy if they used their own proprietary media device.
How do you feel about Nintendo releasing a new console that won’t use a disc of some sort?
