A new report out of Japan has given us a morsel of NX information to chew on. Nikkei reports that, despite Nintendo’s veil of secrecy surrounding the “NX” platform until at least 2016, some officials have revealed the the system’s operating system will be based on Google’s Android platform.

Their official source notes that it’s a historic change for Nintendo, who, since 1983, has designed not only their own hardware and software, but also their own proprietary operating systems. The move to Android makes it “possible to encourage the participation of all software developers … to expand to a variety of devices, such as smartphones and tablets,” according to their informant. This comes after the colossal backfiring that is the Wii U, which third parties have all but deserted (with Nikkei citing Square Enix’s Dragon Quest Heroes on Sony’s PlayStation 4), leaving Nintendo as one of the only big publishers still supporting it.

Of course, we still don’t know whether the NX is a home console or a handheld device. The report also points out that third party support has dropped from about 70% of the Nintendo DS library to about 30% of the Nintendo 3DS library.

Nikkei