Let’s travel back in time to a day before the Nintendo DS flew off store shelves. Behind the scenes Nintendo was experimenting with a touch screen adapter for the GBA. This technology was later used for a new handheld which we know very well now. However, a patent application filed by Nintendo in 2004 shows [...]

Why are patents important? They tell a story you’re not going to immediately hear from company until months or years later. Maybe never. Not all patents will be used, that’s a given. A patent represents a concept or idea a company believes could be important in their future.   Next week thousands of video game [...]

After capturing an expanded audience of senior citizens and adults that love Wii Sports you have to wonder who Nintendo plans on targeting next. A patent filed today in the USA shows one scenario. This patent is for a system of games designed for young children, defined by Nintendo as toddlers and pre-kindergartners, and/or people [...]

Whether you choose fight, magic or “instrument” combat in RPGs involves a lot of watching and not much action. Square Enix acknowledges this and says in a patent application registered in June 2007 “due to a selected attack being more or less determined, a player’s degree of skill has been little reflected in a result [...]

  Imagine playing a video game bundled with a tangible robot that rolls around on your carpet. Sounds unbelievable, but Sony Computer Entertainment filed a patent application for just that in June of last year.     The robot is designed with a camera (item 14) to detect its surroundings and a display (18) which [...]

Other than slashing thin air how can developers utilize motion control for a role playing game? Namco Bandai has an idea, one they were confident enough in to patent. First filed in Japan in November 2007 and released here in June 2008 this patent shows its age, but it’s neat to see something Namco Bandai [...]

A US registered patent filed by Sony Computer Entertainment clues us in to a video game controller sitting somewhere in Sony’s R&D labs. The unnamed input device has a LED on the front and an external power supply. Emitted light is captured by an inexpensive camera and translated into user input data. Sony’s interface program [...]

On March 10, 2006 Nintendo filed a patent for an “Accelerometer-based controller” in Japan, which is now registered on the US Patent and Trademark database. I wont bore you with the technical details because we know what it’s for, the Wii remote.   On further perusal, the patent figures have some interesting tidbits. One sketch [...]