Hi. What with all these NX reports lately, there sure are a whole lot of folks who seem to be gettin' real real mad at Nintendo for "lying" to them about the NX, and whether it is or is not a tablet that docks to your TV or what.



Whoa, slow down! I know that you have those same two paragraphs all queued up on your clipboard already, ready to paste into any thread in which anyone utters the word "hybrid." Don't worry, I'm going to paste them for you, so you don't have to. Anyway, I know there are quite a few of you who'll never be convinced by this, but I just figured having a thread to point to for the next six months or a year or however long it takes would be helpful.



Nintendo did not lie to anyone, and Nintendo did not say "NX will not be a hybrid," and nothing Nintendo ever said was ever proof that NX wasn't a hybrid. This is true even if the Eurogamer report turns out to be an LSD-fueled Cybermorph review and NX is actually a PC running Steam. It was never ruled out.



Iwata, January 2013:



"What we mean by integrating platforms is not integrating handhelds devices and home consoles to make only one machine. What we are aiming at is to integrate the architecture to form a common basis for software development so that we can make software assets more transferrable, and operating systems and their build-in applications more portable, regardless of form factor or performance of each platform."



This was January 2013, which is forever ago in Nintendo time. The Wii U had only just come out and was not yet a catastrophic failure. Nintendo had *just* merged the platform teams, which meant that it had only at that moment started looking into what might be possible. It had to be clear to investors and media about what it WAS announcing and what it was NOT announcing - at that moment. It still had the freedom to follow that research wherever it led, and if it so desired, to produce a game machine that functioned as a handheld unit but also as a TV-based game player.



Note that in 2011, Iwata had said, of Nintendo making smartphone games, "This is absolutely not under consideration." Four years later, it was partnered up with DeNA.



POP QUIZ TIME!



Quick, read this sentence, then answer the question that follows.



"I am not sure if I am going to go to the store today," Bob said. "I might stay home."



Q: Is Bob going to go to the store today?



a) Yes

b) No

c) I don't know



Time's up! If you answered c), you're right: Bob might go to the store, or he might stay home, and you don't have enough information to answer the question.



Iwata, January 2014:



"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. To cite a specific case, Apple is able to release smart devices with various form factors one after another because there is one way of programming adopted by all platforms. Apple has a common platform called iOS. Another example is Android. Though there are various models, Android does not face software shortages because there is one common way of programming on the Android platform that works with various models. The point is, Nintendo platforms should be like those two examples. Whether we will ultimately need just one device will be determined by what consumers demand in the future, and that is not something we know at the moment."



Q: Is Nintendo going to integrate form factors?



If you aced that quiz about Bob but think this Iwata quote absolutely rules out a hybrid... well, you may want to read both lines again.



As I said when that first "What We Know About NX" thread came up, this is a bit of deflection. Note that Iwata was asked point-blank if Nintendo was going to integrate handhelds and consoles into a single machine. He could have responded, "No. We absolutely will not do that, because handhelds need to worry about battery life first and foremost, and consoles need raw power, and therefore they must be separate devices." Instead he started talking about how Apple has lots of different-sized phones, phablets, tablets, etc. His response to the question wasn't "no," it was, "hell, I don't know, maybe we will."



Of course Nintendo could ship many different form factors, over time. Maybe they make a little pocket-sized handheld, or maybe there's one that just hooks up to your television and has no screen. I mean, it's Nintendo for chrissakes, they love releasing all kinds of variations on hardware. Who knows! But neither of these statements ever meant that that the product Nintendo is shipping in March 2017 isn't a hybrid.