At the beginning of the week Nintendo's component supplier revealed that Nintendo has plans to build 10-12 million NX consoles towards the end of Q1 2016 – so, basically around April. Nintendo has yet to reveal detailed information on the console, but Nintendo's new president, Tatsumi Kimishima, has been more forthcoming with information in the recent days.
According to Kimishima, the NX will not be a new iteration of the Wii or Wii U, it will be its own device free of the chains that bound the Wii U's development.
"As far as NX goes, I've said it's different and obviously a new experience," said Kimishima during an interview with Time. "If you look back to the beginning of our conversation today, we talked about the transition from Wii hardware to the Wii U hardware and how difficult it is to explain to the consumer base what is different and new about the new hardware. It's difficult to convince them to switch from their current platform to the next platform."
"That being said, I can assure you we're not building the next version of Wii or Wii U," continued Kimishima. "It's something unique and different. It's something where we have to move away from those platforms in order to make it something that will appeal to our consumer base."
Kimishima's statements of the NX being a 'unique' console seem to support a patent that Nintendo filed back in August. The patent detailed a disk-less stationary console with what appeared to be plans to support game cartridges, as well as SD cards. Nintendo has not commented on the patent, but if what Kimishima is saying is true, Nintendo wants to show people something brand new with the NX's official reveal.
As for the console's codename, Kimishima doesn't believe "that there's any real meaning behind it" and doesn't really know where it came from. However, he says that there may be some secret meaning behind it, but didn't have the opportunity to learn what NX meant due to the passing of Nintendo President Satoru Iwata.