Nintendo NX release date, specs: Touch screen controller?

Nintendo website

Not much is known about the Nintendo NX, the company's upcoming top-secret console. Nintendo promised to serve up new details about it next year and while gamers wait, they could do with leaks of a patent document, which introduces an awful lot of details about the device.

The leak suggested that the new platform will forego the traditional A, B, X and Y buttons on its controller for a touch screen that will instead display motion controls. That means that instead of pressing A to jump, a designated jump button will instead be displayed. The same goes for other functions.

That being said, these Nintendo NX controls will change depending on the game's framework, allowing Nintendo to chip in designated buttons for straightforward actions unique to games such as icons for certain functions or display thumbnails of weapons when players are trying to choose one. This suggests that the console will adjust to the kind of gameplay and functions a game offers.

The patent document also hinted that for certain games, the touch screen will display the enemy on the screen of the controller and players can just tap highlighted or selectable parts to hit or damage it.

This new leaked goes hand in hand with the previously leaked patent spotted by Tech Radar that hinted the Nintendo NX can be "mobile, semi-mobile, semi-stationary or stationary."

This patent also hints that the console will come with a "supplemental computing device" with functionality that adjusts to how far or near gamers are from the main console. This device may very well be the touch screen controller in this new leak.

It is important to note that the purported Nintendo NX controller will not entirely be touch screen as it was designed with what look like two shoulder buttons, a couple of thumbsticks and what is believed to be a card slot.

At the moment, none of this is yet to be corroborated. What CEO Tatsumi Kimishima has said so far is that the Nintendo NX will not be the next Wii.