Ubisoft CEO Claims Nintendo NX Console Is ‘Really Great’ For Casual Gamers

Nintendo is going to launch a brand new game console codenamed NX in March of next year, that much we know. Beyond that, it's a big guessing game as to what exactly Nintendo is cooking up and whether it will be worth the wait, though Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot seems encouraged by what he's seen of the new hardware.

"What we have seen is really great," Guillemot said during a quarterly earnings call on Tuesday. "We think having a new machine coming is going to help the industry to grow, and to take lots more casual players back to the industry."

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There's a lot of speculation about the NX, especially since Nintendo keeps promising something unique. Early on, some surmised it was going to be an Android console, but a spokesman for Nintendo later shot down the rumor. And if you're hoping for a high-powered system to compete with Microsoft's Project Scorpion and Sony's PlayStation 4 Neo, you're going to be disappointed. Nintendo is looking to win the hardware war, not in terms of raw specs anyway.

"For us, it's not about specs, it's not about teraflops, it's not about the horsepower of a particular system," Fils-Aime told Bloomberg in an interview last month. "For us, it's about the content. Nintendo is a content focused company, we create content that makes people smile. So for us we're focused on bringing our best entertainment to both the Wii U as well as the NX in the future."

When Nintendo announced that it planned to release the NX in March of next year, the company said it would be based on a "brand new concept," but offered up little else. If you're thinking that means VR, you can wipe that off the list as well. Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto didn't seem all that stoked about all the VR hype when he spoke at the company's annual shareholder meeting earlier this month.

"We’ve been looking at the technology, but we should also see how it fits into our products that are designed to use for the long term and how parents would feel about their children mounting VR devices," Miyamoto said.

Getting back to Ubisoft, it's the only major developer to have announced a game for the NX, that being Just Dance 2017. As March of next year comes closer into view, we suspect more game announcements will be made.