Back in 1995, a friend who worked at Sega asked me to give Sony at Winter CES the details on the "surprise" E3 launch of the Saturn. He got screwed over by his bosses and it was a little revenge I was helping him with.
I go see another friend and he's really pissed at me because I'm going to talk to Sony. (Even though we were friends since High School in the late 80's, he was so pissed about the Sony thing he stopped talking to me not too long after that. I don't really get it, but ok.) This guy isn't going to E3, but Sony just ruined his company and they were going to enter a legal battle with them. One of the founders of his company is the main guy behind Tempest (the Atari arcade game, I don't remember the guy's name). This guy helped design a type of gyroscope that didn't need lubrication, made out of plastic, really small but accurate and such. It was very revolutionary at the time for gyro tech. WTF does this have to do with SCEA? Anyway, Sony made this really huge deal about how amazing this gyroscope tech was and expressed interest in purchasing this small startup company so the company went and had meetings and showed Sony all their tech. At the time I spoke to him, Sony passed on the tech but one of the companies they own was releasing I think it was a digital camera with the gyroscope inside to tilt the picture or something. I can't remember, it's been 10 years. They were convinced Sony stole the tech and hated them and hated me for being interested in the PS and going to talk to SCEA because some other part of Sony screwed them over. (their products were being used mainly in revolution controller-sized mice for business presentations.)
Went to SCEA and had to waste most of a day waiting for the meeting to help out a good friend. They fit me in at the end of another group's meeting and I'm listening to them talk about the features of the PS1 to these developers and the guy giving the demo says "You guys know we have some really amazing stuff in the works for this new console. One of the things is a flight controller unlike anything you've seen before. It's shaped like a little bird and you hold it in your hand and move it as you'd like a plane to move and the little plastic gyroscope inside...." and I said "Oh shit!" (I was thinking it and just blurted it out) as the realization that this product was about to die due to the lawsuit from my friend's company was going to kill this product. I never told any of them the story about my friend/the lawsuit, people just thought I was blown away by the product or something.
If anyone's claiming this kid made a gyroscope and Nintendo "stole" it... (didn't read the article, but I'm going by others comments) I'll be the first to call Shenannigans due to the story above.
Nintendo isn't the first game company to make something with a tiny gyroscope inside.
