Nintendo NX release date: New console will arrive in March 2017, company confirms

The much-hyped new console will be shown off later this year

. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Nintendo’s next console will be released in March next year, it has confirmed.

The system, codenamed NX, was revealed as part of a financial release in which Nintendo laid out its plans for the next year.

The NX has been long rumoured but details are still fairly sparse. It’s said to be nothing like any console it has previously brought to market, according to Nintendo president Tatsumi Kmishima, but how exactly it will work is still unclear.

Nintendo announced as part of the same release that it would look to bring more of its game to smartphones, as it recently did with Miitomo. The next two will be classic games Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing, it said, both of which will be released this Autumn.

Nintendo will reveal the NX console “later this year”, it said in the release. Previous rumours have suggested that it could be revealed towards the end of the year.

The company won’t show off the new console at the E3 event in June, it said. Instead, it will focus on the new Zelda game, which had been scheduled to come out last year but has since been pushed back to 2015.

Super Mario Bros: The Opera?

The Wii U version of Legend of Zelda will be available to play for E3 attendees. It won’t be letting people play any other game at the trade show “in order to provide attendees a complete immersion”, it said.

That game will be launched on Wii U and the NX at the same time, it said in the release. That will probably mean that its release date is the same as the NX, in March.