Nintendo patent reveals some very interesting tidbits (possibly) pertaining to Café
If you’re a patient reader, check out the full PDF here. If you’d rather just get the bulletpoints, here’s what I gather from it:
– ‘Parent’ device and ‘Child’ devices
– ‘Child’ device connects to ‘Parent’ devices to stream data/games
– ‘Child’ device can communicate with multiple ‘Parent’ devices, receive identification date
– A sort of “GBA+Gamecube” without the cords
– ‘Child’ device houses game cartridge, can be detached from ‘Parent’ device
– ‘Child’ device can send requests to ‘Parent’ devices for data transfers
– Multiple ‘Child’ devices meant to be used at the same time in constant communication
– Has a sort of ‘Download Play’ option
– Uses Bluetooth for communication
– Mario Kart and F-Zero are mentioned multiple times throughout the patent
– Uses very confusing language, such as ‘thereby’, ‘wherein’, etc (ie, ‘patent speak’ that makes it real hard to read)
Okay, maybe I sort of just added that last one for kicks. The point here is that we’ve essentially confirmed a lot of the speculation that a 3DS-like device would be used to control Café, and can break off from being just a controller to play games on its own. Note that I got kind of bored reading all of that confusing patent-speak, so if you go through and read it yourself, post any info I missed here!
Of course, take all patents with a grain of salt- just because Nintendo patented it, doesn’t mean it’ll for sure happen! We’ll find out all the details at E3…
