Dancing around the details about Nintendo's

Nikkei that the company may take a wildly different direction with the system than with its past platforms.

"If you only expand upon existing hardware, it's dull," Iwata said, translated by Kotaku. "In some shape or form, we're always thinking about how we want to surprise players as well as our desire to change each person's video gaming life."

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Sparse details of the new " dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept ” were revealed during a joint announcement of its partnership with DeNA to create official Nintendo smartphone games. Iwata announced NX during the briefing to prove that the move into smartphone games wasn’t a sign of lost "passion or vision" for dedicated game systems. Nintendo expects to share more details about about NX next year.

Jenna Pitcher is a freelance journalist writing for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter