Nintendo’s New Secret Weapon: Where We’re Goin’, We Don’t Need Any Buttons!

  Nintendo have long been known as the innovators of the gaming world. They may be lumbering along in the dark ages when it comes to this new-fangled ‘online gaming’ thing, but man these guys have been influential. D-pads, analog sticks, L-targeting… you saw it down Nintendo way first, gents.

However. Far too often, innovating is just a euphemism for being utterly and howlingly batshit crazy, and they’ve been guilty of that a couple times over the years too. The Virtual Boy was both decades ahead of its time and a ghastly-ass disaster. The DS was pretty well the best thing that ever hit handheld gaming, while the Wii U was a chunky GamePad gimmick too far.

That’s the danger, right there. Busting out something so new and exciting that all witnesses within a twenty mile radius lose bowel control is a risky business. You don’t want to be like those post-modern artists who just make the weirdest slice of weirdly weirdery they can just for the sake of it. There are no bonus points for edginess.

With all that in mind, there’s no way of knowing what the hell their latest system’s all about. It's codenamed the ‘NX,’ and is touted as a console/mobile hybrid. That’s about all we’ve got to go on. Which is why there are rumors and faux-leaks and such flying all over the darn place.

The latest comes from Redditor perkele37, who makes a convincing case for the above image really being the NX’s controller. He tells us of mouse-wheel-esque scrollers and haptic feedback, as Destructoid reports, which sounds pretty darn fancy to me. And the whole button-free design? That’s sleek. Sleek is the word alright.

There’s still a lot of scepticism around the alleged dev kit pictured, but I’m on board with it.