New Nintendo patent: clickable scroll wheel shoulder buttons
Nintendo has filed a new patent involving clickable scroll wheel shoulder buttons. The filing was submitted in February of this year, but was only just published today.
An image included with the patent shows a controller that looks fairly reminiscent of a Wii U GamePad. The device has a touchscreen, but features a smaller design and two instead of four buttons as well as analog sticks rather than Circle Pads. Most significant is the addition of clickable scroll wheels for the left and right shoulder buttons.
Here’s an abstract from Nintendo’s filing:
“An example operation apparatus includes: a direction input operation section provided on a front surface of a housing of the operation apparatus and at such a position that, in a state where the operation apparatus is held with at least one hand of a user, the direction input operation section is allowed to be operated with a thumb of the hand; and a rotation operation section which is provided on a surface different from the front surface of the housing and at such a position that, in a state where the operation apparatus is held with the hand or the other hand of the user, the rotation operation section is allowed to be operated with an index finger of the hand or the other hand and which is an operation section capable of being rotationally operated.”
We’ll have to see if anything comes from this patent. This could just be a harmless filing on Nintendo’s part!
