By Franceen Robles on August 22, 2015 at 9:42pm
Nintendo's latest patent application for a "stationary game apparatus" was published by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on Aug 20, 2015, fueling speculations within the gaming community regarding its lack of an optical drive.
The patent application, filed on Feb 10, 2015, immediately announced within the abstract that the system will not come with an optical disk drive. According to the schematic, the system will have a card slot to read external programs from. The system is also outfitted with an internal hard drive, as well as a "connection unit" to attach an external hard drive. Another aspect to note is the presence of a controller that supposedly has its own display, similar to the Wii U's gamepad.
A NeoGAF user posted about the application a day after the publication, and the community quickly responded with various concerns and speculations. Most of the conversation centered around the console's lack of an optical drive, driving users to speculate as to whether the games would be distributed digitally or via cartridges.
The application's discovery follows Nintendo's announcement of their new console in the works, codenamed "NX", back in March of this year.
NeoGAF USPTO Application
