An official announcement will be made before year's end

Aug 1, 2014 06:01 GMT  ·  By

Nintendo has registered three new trademarks for its future Quality of Life initiative in the United States, after previously obtaining protection for them in both Europe and Japan, which might suggest that an official announcement about the concept is coming soon.

A user on NeoGAF has spotted the registrations, which do not offer any sort of details about the coming hardware and what it might actually do.

Quality of Life was initially mentioned by Nintendo in 2013, and the company suggested that it could be a way of improving overall sales of the Wii U home console by connecting the device with an untapped market.

Since then, the leadership of the company has explained that it will be introducing new hardware that will focus on the health of its users and that an official announcement is set to be offered at some point in 2014.

Nintendo has recently revealed that the Wii U home console has sold just 0.51 million units from April to June, although its performance is supposed to increase significantly in the coming months.

Before the end of the year the company will also deliver its new Amiibo line of figurines, which might be first associated by Super Smash Bros. with the Wii U.