• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

It's patent-time: "Wireless communication game system" from Nintendo

Vic

Please help me with my bad english
There's a PDF inside the link. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7929911.html

Very interesting stuff in that PDF.

Abstract:
"A wireless communication game system includes a plurality of mobile game apparatuses, which function as a parent device or a child device and are capable of making a communication with each other, and broadcasts from the parent device a parent device packet including a parent device PID, a user name UserName, a game name GameName, an OC flag, an E slot, a U slot, and a payload. All the parent device packets are received from the parent device existing within a communicationable range of a user's own apparatus, and the user's own apparatus creates a parent device list, and displays the parent device list on an LCD. Therefore, a user or a player of his own apparatus looks at the game name of the parent device list, for example, and operates a cross key included in an operation key so as to select one desired parent device. Then, transmitting a child device number CID of the user's own apparatus at the E slot designated by the parent device packet, the user's own apparatus transmits a connection request to the parent device."
 

Xdrive05

Member
So basically it's a patent for a system in which a main console "hub" transmits and receives data packages to and from a controller (which has a suite of handheld-console like features). And the controller is able to display a list of all the "hub" consoles within its range, as well as the game(s) available on those hub consoles?
 
2004 does not mean much if Nintendo wanted to wait for Cheaper Tech to catch up with the idea seems very close to what has been going around
 
Why would you do that? said:
I don't really understand the wording right now...

...but how is it different from PS3's RemotePlay? Or VNC clients?


Either way, yay for cafe!

Based off what we know, the main difference will be that the controller won't cost as much as a PSP, a Sony Ericsson phone or VNC capable smart phone..
 

Raide

Member
radioheadrule83 said:
Based off what we know, the main difference will be that the controller won't cost as much as a PSP, a Sony Ericsson phone or VNC capable smart phone..

What about 1 console and 3 extra controllers? That will start to get expensive.
 

Huff

Banned
radioheadrule83 said:
Based off what we know, the main difference will be that the controller won't cost as much as a PSP, a Sony Ericsson phone or VNC capable smart phone..

So expensive but not THAT expensive
 
44 pages...ouch. Well at least half of it is diagrams. Will have to read later as my first thought from the diagram is it like wireless play.

ummo said:
F-zero and Mario Kart 2
It says MarioCart-2 in figure 4.

Don't forget F-Zero has a "normal mode" and "one-cartridge mode".
 

ummo

Banned
Raide said:
What about 1 console and 3 extra controllers? That will start to get expensive.



it seems like a 4-way playable system

3z8yM.jpg
 
Reading a bit of it, I'm wondering if this was just a broad patent to cover something like DS Download Play mode, or a future version of the 'connectivity' concept in a wireless environment. The patent refers to a mobile gaming machine tethered to a wireless device, and that seems kind of weird given that Nintendo's machines now have wireless built in... unless of course they are illustrating an internal object model of sorts...
 

ummo

Banned
why the cartridge is related to the child device instead the main parent unit? maybe the main unit now is the controller itself.
 

antispin

Member
Xdrive05 said:
So basically it's a patent for a system in which a main console "hub" transmits and receives data packages to and from a controller (which has a suite of handheld-console like features). And the controller is able to display a list of all the "hub" consoles within its range, as well as the game(s) available on those hub consoles?

Reading... but atm, it sounds like one apparatus (referred to as User's Apparatus, UA) acting as a dumb terminal; UA is able to access several parent devices within the UA's wireless range. Each parent device can have many child devices (likely controllers).

So basically sounds like the cafe controller, which might be able to connect to the main console, or to say a 3ds and choose which game to stream off the several parents within range.

Edit: Also describes multiplayer games.
 

Michan

Member
mugurumakensei said:
that was wired. This is wireless.
Well yes, but the fundamentals are pretty much exactly the same. Perhaps they were just preparing this in anticipation of connectivity between DS + GCN, but bailed after the poor performance of FFCC and FSA.
 

[Nintex]

Member
antispin said:
Reading... but atm, it sounds like one apparatus (referred to as User's Apparatus, UA) acting as a dumb terminal; UA is able to access several parent devices within the UA's wireless range. Each parent device can have many child devices (likely controllers).

So basically sounds like the cafe controller, which might be able to connect to the main console, or to say a 3ds and choose which game to stream off the several parents within range.
Or maybe a GBA game with single-cart multiplayer features.
In single cart, only one player needs to have a cartridge. The other players will boot off the link cable network from the player with the cart using the GBA's netboot capability. All players drive a generic craft, and the game can only be played on one level, Silence. Silence is the only re-used course in Maximum Velocity other than Fire Field. Aptly, Silence in F-Zero Maximum Velocity has no background music.

It seems like an expansion of the patent they had on these sorts of things.
 

antispin

Member
[Nintex] said:
Or maybe a GBA game with single-cart multiplayer features.


It seems like an expansion of the patent they had on these sorts of things.

Yeah you are right, some of this also sounds like the DS/3DS download and play functionality; wherein you can play small demos or take part in single-cart multiplayer titles.

But that's just a subset of what is being described here. The larger picture is outlining the cafe concept as we know it atm.

Edit: Come to think of it, the core of Cafe and the single-cart multi/one cart demos are very similar, conceptually. I didn't connect them before reading this PDF.

Conclusion: this may or may not describe the specific Cafe controller, but the concept described herein is very similar to the Stream/Cafe model.
 

consoul

Member
Sounds like the controllers are mobile game devices that can detect and stream games from any Cafe within range. GameBoy, is that you? Return of the third pillar!
 

Lesiroth

Member
consoul said:
Sounds like the controllers are mobile game devices that can detect and stream games from any Cafe within range. GameBoy, is that you? Return of the third pillar!
Call the controllers GameBoy, dominate next generation.
 
Top Bottom