Iwata: No news on Nintendo's next console until 2016

Nintendo won't be talking about its new console, the NX, nor its quality of life initiative or push into smartphone games during E3 this year, said company president Satoru Iwata.

"We do not plan on talking specifics about the the NX until 2016," Iwata said during an investors meeting last week (as translated by Brian Ashcraft over at Kotaku).

"Presently, we cannot talk about the time period when it [the NX] will go on sale or what it's like. Because we are calling it a ‘new concept,' we are not thinking of this as a ‘simple replacement' for the 3DS or the Wii U."

Later, Iwata addressed some of the other new initiatives that the company is exploring.

"Incidentally, we're getting various questions for this year's E3, like ‘Won't there be a NX announcement?', ‘Will there be a presentation on smart devices?', or ‘Will there be more on the quality of life platform?' However, since we understand that E3 is an event for dedicated video game machines, we do not intend to discuss the smart devices as well as quality of life."

Nintendo continues to reexamine how it does business in the wake of three years of losses. Nintendo posted its first profit since 2012 this year.

The company recently announced a partnership with DeNA to release five smartphone games by March 2017. It also announced, though with no detail, work on the new NX console and that it is looking into doing away with region-locking in future consoles.

Nintendo recently announced that more than three-quarters of the company's profits came from outside Japan and that they've sold 10.5 million amiibo toys, possible signs that the company's new direction is working.