Sharp Announced They Are Making LCDs For A New Console (Is It Nintendo’s?)

gameranx.com:

Rumors about Nintendo’s next console are running wild once again, thanks to news about Sharp working on new video game hardware.

Sharp has announced in their latest earnings call that they are making liquid crystal display screens for a new console. As reported by Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance, Sharp Chief Executive Officer Robert Wu had this to say:

“I can’t comment on any details regarding specific customers. But as to a new gaming console, we’ve been involved in its R&D stage.”

In spite of the announcement, Sharp was uncharacteristically quiet about the identity of their client, who commissioned the LCD screens. After their presentation, Sharp was careful to delete slides showing their new LCD screens online.

The immediate speculation is that these screens are for the console Nintendo is making after the Switch. While this seems to be baseless speculation just based on the timing of the rumor, it’s actually quite well founded.

Sharp and Nintendo have a relationship that goes back decades. They famously made Nintendo hardware in the 1980s and 1990s, such as the Sharp Twin Famicom, as well as TVs that had a built in Famicom or Super Famicom.

Sharp also supplied the CPUs used in the Game Boy line, all the way to the Game Boy Advance.

In fact, Game Boy’s predecessor, the Game & Watch, came about partly because its creator, Gunpei Yokoi, happened to have had a chance to talk to his boss Hiroshi Yamauchi, right as when he was about to meet then president of Sharp Akira Saeki. You can read all about that story here.

But Sharp today is not quite the same company it was in Saeki’s time. The 100 + year old company rivals Sony as a pioneer in consumer technology, including portable TVs, PCs, home appliances, solar cells, mobile