A patent application by Nintendo might be a hint as to what it's planning in the near future related to its upcoming Nintendo NX video game console. The patent, filed this February, talks about a "stationary game console" that uses only hard drives and external cards for storage -- the first time a TV-based Nintendo system would go without discs since the Nintendo 6.

According to the patent filling, the The "stationary game apparatus" will have "an internal hard disk drive storing a program and/or data; a communication unit transmitting/receiving a program and/or data via a network; and a processor executing a program stored in the hard disk drive to perform game processing, wherein the game apparatus is not provided with an optical disk drive."

There aren't any big clues as to the NX's hardware, and Nintendo has declined to provide any details so far, rather that it would not run Android and that it would be shipped sometime next year.

The patent can be accessed here.