I'm leaning towards ARM just because Nintendo already has a huge supply chain and manufacturing complex geared towards this architecture.
They're extensively bought into the ARM ecosystem. They already have a NES emulator on ARM (3DS NES Virtual Console). ARM SoCs are so incredibly cheap (look at the low volume RasPI with its HDMI output and now WiFI). The Nintendo hardware engineering teams have extensive ARM experience. There will undoubtedly be a business requirement for platform security (wrt the bundled games). This is, from Nintendo's perspective, a solved problem on their portable console platform.
Over a long period and at high volumes, sure - a NES hardware clone might make for a cheaper BoM. But that's not where the cost is here. It's in the engineering, initial supply chain and manufacturing startup. Sticking with ARM keeps all of those costs down.
Build a lightweight OS (based on the 3DS/2DS OS), able to run the same the same binaries, with the same libraries and you've cut out a massive amount of software engineering work and expense.
Ship some stripped down 2DS/3DS hardware, and you've saved a lot of hardware engineering work and expense.
I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't extremely close to the 3DS/2DS in terms of architecture, minus the IO, battery and secondary ARM CPU.
They're extensively bought into the ARM ecosystem. They already have a NES emulator on ARM (3DS NES Virtual Console). ARM SoCs are so incredibly cheap (look at the low volume RasPI with its HDMI output and now WiFI). The Nintendo hardware engineering teams have extensive ARM experience. There will undoubtedly be a business requirement for platform security (wrt the bundled games). This is, from Nintendo's perspective, a solved problem on their portable console platform.
Over a long period and at high volumes, sure - a NES hardware clone might make for a cheaper BoM. But that's not where the cost is here. It's in the engineering, initial supply chain and manufacturing startup. Sticking with ARM keeps all of those costs down.
Build a lightweight OS (based on the 3DS/2DS OS), able to run the same the same binaries, with the same libraries and you've cut out a massive amount of software engineering work and expense.
Ship some stripped down 2DS/3DS hardware, and you've saved a lot of hardware engineering work and expense.
I'd actually be surprised if it wasn't extremely close to the 3DS/2DS in terms of architecture, minus the IO, battery and secondary ARM CPU.