Nintendo president Satoru Iwata during one of his Nintendo Direct video events.
Categories

The DeanBeat: The intriguing possibilities for Nintendo’s upcoming NX game hardware

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 6 min

Nintendo’s chief executive Satoru Iwata dropped some tantalizing clues this week about the company’s plans to enter the market for smartphone games and, separately, create a new piece of dedicated game hardware, code-named NX.

Iwata still hasn’t called me to explain this and tell me I was right in 2008 when I warned Nintendo about the success of the iPhone and the disruptive effect it could have on the Nintendo handheld gaming business. But he was also right to be wary. Back then, smartphone games were a small market, and there was no way to set Nintendo’s games apart from the pack of free and 99-cent titles.

Unlock premium content and VIP community perks with GB M A X! Join now to enjoy our free and premium perks. 

Join now →

Sign in to your account.

Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.