Nintendo Wanted Cyanogen on the Switch Console

A new report has surfaced that claims during the early days of development of the new Nintendo Switch game console, Nintendo wanted to put Cyanogen’s flavor of Android on the console. Word of this attempt comes from Cyanogen Inc’s Executive Chairman Kirt McMaster. McMaster tweeted that Nintendo approached his company while he was serving as CEO and asked about Cyanogen making an OS “for a certain portable.”

Apparently Nintendo didn’t call the console the Switch, but at the time the 3DS was already on the market meaning the Switch had to be what Nintendo was talking about. The inquiry was made in the “early days of Cyanogen” according to McMaster. I’m not sure why the CEO of a company like Cyanogen would turn down one of the largest gaming companies in the world in the early days of his business, but he did.

AndroidHeadlines reports that the original tweet where McMaster says that he refused Nintendo has been deleted. While the Switch doesn’t run Android, it does use some of the OS’ parts. McMaster says that the Switch is running a custom kernel based on FreeBSD and uses Android’s Stagefright multimedia framework. The chip is an NVIDIA unit and rumors have been rampant since that chip launched that it uses a heavily modified version of Android.

Switch gamers have asked for more media streaming apps and with word of Cyanogen’s snub of Nintendo coming to light some might be annoyed. If the Switch had come running Cyanogen Android, that could well mean that the world of Android apps would have been available right from launch for the Switch.