In 2001, Nintendo released the GameCube, a console that received a fairly good reception from the public. While it did take hits for its rather unsophisticated design, it went on to do pretty well unti int was discontinued in 2007. Thirteen years later, a recent leak shows that Nintendo may have been tinkering with plans to create a portable version of the system.
On September 2nd, Twitter user LuigiBlood posted a technical schematic that seems to outline how the portable GameCube would work. From the image, another Twitter user, Toruzz, concluded that it was possibly designed to have a dock with external controllers, network access, memory cards, and a mini-DVD drive.
A portable GC model proposal has been found in the recent leaks. It would've included a dock with support for external controllers, network, memory cards and a mini-DVD drive. pic.twitter.com/wETVYLKpzi
— toruzz (@toruzz) September 2, 2020
Diving further, replies to the tweet speculate that the plans seem too farfetched to develop at the time of the console’s peak. Memory, for one, would have been far too expensive, hence the use of a mini-DVD drive. The general idea taken from the image was that the portable GameCube would have had to transfer files from the mini-DVD to the console but this also meant that it only had the capacity to play one game at a time.
There really isn’t more to this leak than an image. There is no news as to whether Nintendo was just playing with the idea or was seriously trying to create a new console. Unfortunately, we may never find that out.