Nintendo denies rumors that its next console will be an Android device

With the Wii U being the utter failure that it is, Nintendo has decided to take another stab at the current generation of consoles with a brand new device that will replace the Wii U as the company’s living room platform. A report from Nikkei claimed that the company was looking to regain lost ground with this new device by adopting Android, a move which many believed to be a surprisingly smart move on Nintendo’s part. However, the Wall Street Journal contacted a Nintendo representative earlier today who denied this rumor. 

Nintendo is reportedly sticking with in-house software to run its next game console, currently codenamed “NX.” That’s what a Nintendo representative told The Wall Street Journal after a report surfaced earlier this week from Japanese newspaper Nikkei. The report claimed that the company’s next game console would run a version of Google’s operating system Android. “There is no truth to the report saying that we are planning to adopt Android for NX,” a representative told The Wall Street Journal. Though Nintendo’s refutation sounds definitive, the Japanese gaming company has a history of flatly refuting rumors from Nikkei that later turned out to be spot-on. And the newspaper has a history of reporting accurate gaming rumors about Japanese game companies. In 2009 Nikkei reported that Sony was working on a PlayStation Phone. Sony didn’t outright deny the report, nor did it offer a statement beyond “no comment.” Two years later, Sony released the Xperia Play phone – a joint effort between Sony and Ericsson, powered by a new game service named PlayStation Mobile. A PlayStation Phone, in so many words.