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[Zombie James]

What a novel invention.

 

[stuminus3]

This totally looks and sounds like something that was put together in 1999.

I can see official Nintendo emulators happening, if only to appease shareholders.

Nintendo aren't exactly known for doing anything only to appease shareholders.

 

[SonyToo!™]

Yamauchi must've showed up to iwata in a dream

It was that BGR article that did it

 

[TheBaldEmperor]

Almost spat out my water as I saw the thread title.

 

[dark_inferno]

And tomorrow they are part of Disney.

Would be funny to see the meltdown.

 

[frankie_baby]

It's likely only to prevent others from selling and supplying homebrew Game Boy emulators on Android/Google marketplaces as those two seemingly don't give a shit about preventing them.

not that they should prevent them, imo.

Yes they should prevent them, they won't be able to stop the emulators existing but having them brazenly available on the play store is just inviting every Tom, Dick or Harry into piracy, if someone wishes to "legitimately" use an emulator then they should be prepared to at least jump through a few hoops to get to them

 

[Settin]

I assume this is to stamp on fan-made Android GBA emulators.

^^^^^^
Although I would be happy to have gameboy on my PC.

 

[deltatheta]

Is ... is that a Palm Pilot?

 

[Herb Alpert]

Iwata read yahoo and suddenly understood.

 

[sörine]

As much as I'd love to see these games on more platforms it's probably just to go after emulator developers.

If that were Nintendo's aim it would've already happened by now. Nintendo started filing patents like these over a decade ago, it's clearly defensive.

 

[Cheat Code]

andherewego.gif?

 

[SonyToo!™]

Didn't Nintendo at one point announce that they were looking at developing for mobile gaming in some limited capacity? If so this might be it.

 

[TI82]

And tomorrow they are part of Disney.

Would be funny to see the meltdown.

Agreed. That thread the other day would have a hilarious ending.

 

[lingpanda]

Sounds like it's going to be used to remove all these emulators on mobile devices. This will force people to buy Nintendo products to play Nintendo games.

 

[Wesker28]

what the ....?

 

[onQ123]

It's either happening! or this is just away to stop it from happening!

 

[OmegaFax]

That doesn't say anything about legal emulation (i.e. Nintendo releasing their own emulator and selling games for it); it only says Nintendo wouldn't support an emulator that can play illegally-downloaded ROMs. I can see official Nintendo emulators happening, if only to appease shareholders.

True, true. It's still going to be difficult to sell bundled games/emulators on something like Google Play alongside other console emulators without some massive takedowns in line to what happened when Sony introduced Playstation games on Google Play. Eh, pricing is probably going to be another issue ... but that bridge will be crossed if Nintendo ever does move forward and materialize anything in this filing.

The legal page doesn't mention Virtual Console at all. Dare I say that I've never seen Nintendo refer to the Virtual Console as emulation at all in any of their marketing materials either?

It will keep investors happy because I think in nearly every shareholder QA, the question that's always bought up is mobile.

 

[zephervack]

Want to see something interesting?

This is a Playstation 1 emulator for Android, it says that it has been downloaded between 100k to 500k times.

To err on the side of caution, lets say it has sold 250k copies @ $3.60

That's $900 thousand dollars

Not peanuts anymore, wondering how these kind of patents havent been enforced before.

 

[Guevara]

Sounds like it's going to be used to remove all these emulators on mobile devices. This will force people to buy Nintendo products to play Nintendo games.

What Nintendo actually believes.

Relatedly, I was thinking of the last time I bought any Nintendo product and I came up with 2011 (Skyward Sword). Three years without giving them a dime.

 

[deltatheta]

Didn't Nintendo at one point announce that they were looking at developing for mobile gaming in some limited capacity? If so this might be it.

They announced that they were going to be developing a smartphone app, and that Iwata hadn't forbidden the team from including games in said app, but it's not going to be a focus.

I'm guessing it's going to be a MiiVerse/eShop app with additional Nintendo marketing material (trailers, YouTube style videos, etc.)

Come to think of it, I don't think it's entirely outside the realm of possibility that they'll include virtual console games in this app. If they ever get around to implementing cross buy, there's no reason that they shouldn't let you play the VC games that you've bought on other platforms.

One issue with that, though, is that it's against Apple's app guidelines for an app to execute code that has been downloaded from the internet. They'd have to get around that somehow.

 

[Dead_Pixel]

Looks like that Yahoo article pushed Iwata & co. over the edge.

 

[MrCunningham]

So basically this makes all GB emulators illegal?

This could be interesting. I get this feeling that they might release a commercial emulator on smartphones and sell Game Boy games for it as IAP's.

These illustrations are straight out of 1998.

"playing some ROM's on my Pentium 4, yo!"

Actually, some of these patents seemed to have been filed back in 2000, looking at the descriptions. So I guess that explains the illustrations.

 

[double jump]

don't know the details of copyright law but I think it should be illegal to make/win a patent for something that already exist.

 

[Damaniel]

There's nearly 20 years of prior art here at this point. I can't imagine that such a patent would ever be granted.

 

[Bulzeeb]

massive cease and decease to all the gb emulators incoming

 

[zephervack]

Prior art... yeah that didnt work when Apple was granted a patent for home screen icons when Palm had that implementation done and in a product WAY before them.

 

[Nibel]

Why is Bill Trinen playing The Last Of Us on a Pentium 4 PC?

 

[mantidor]

When was the last time a Nintendo patent materialized?

Relatedly, I was thinking of the last time I bought any Nintendo product and I came up with 2011 (Skyward Sword). Three years without giving them a dime.

Lol you sound so proud about such a petty thing.

 

[sörine]

There's nearly 20 years of prior art here at this point. I can't imagine that such a patent would ever be granted.

Nintendo's been doing emulation the entire time too though. First commercial use was in 1998 on N64 with the Pokémon games through the transfer pack used in Pokémon Stadium. The 64DD was also announced to be able to download and play NES games (sort of a proto-Virtual Console).

 

[Nintendojitsu]

Nintendo's legal team just popped a boner.

 

[TC McQueen]

You know what? I wouldn't mind this patent existing if Nintendo actually bothered to put out their own official emulators, but they're probably just going to use it to screw over existing emulators.

 

[The12thGripper]

The end is nigh.

 

[Tizoc]

Dare I dream for eff' ton of Gameboy games on Steam?

 

[giapel]

PDA's still exist? :O

 

[Purkake4]

The pictures are second only to horse bag.

 

[Barkley's Justice]

Just covering their bases.

 

[Zombie James]

Nintendo's legal team just popped a boner.

Wonder what the going rate is for defending a patent for something that has nearly two decades of prior art.

 

[MidnightCowboy]

I played Pokemon Yellow and Wario Land 3 on the seat back display on a flight once over a decade ago. This reminded me of that. Good memories.

 

[whiteninja]

I dont think this will do anything to free emulators. Maybe stop people from selling them though.

 

[Penguin]

I wonder if they will do something like this to open it up for 3rd parties to publish older games on mobile and take a tiny % of that

 

[Chainsawkitten]

don't know the details of copyright law but I think it should be illegal to make/win a patent for something that already exist.

You indeed can not patent something that already exists. ... which doesn't necessarily stop multi-billion dollar corporations from doing so anyways.

 

[GamerSoul]

Sounds like it's going to be used to remove all these emulators on mobile devices. This will force people to buy Nintendo products to play Nintendo games.

I think so too. Pretty damn smart of them. :/

 

[spookyfish]

I assume this is to stamp on fan-made Android GBA emulators.

That was my thought as well. Now they can stop everyone emulating the games.

 

[jblank83]

It'shappening.gif ???

 

[Damaniel]

Nintendo's been doing emulation the entire time too though. First commercial use was in 1998 on N64 with the Pokémon games through the transfer pack used in Pokémon Stadium. The 64DD was also announced to be able to download and play NES games (sort of a proto-Virtual Console).

The earliest emulators of Nintendo systems predate that. iNES and Pasofami date to 1995-ish, and according to an emulation FAQ from 1997, there were at least 4 GameBoy emulators released by then.

Nintendo might have been there early, but they certainly weren't there first. Not even close.

 

[dan2026]

That was my thought as well. Now they can stop everyone emulating the games.

How exactly can they stop people emulating the games?

 

[nampad]

Reading the abstract, I have to wonder once again how the hell you can patent things that have been published, common practice for a decade.

But I wonder that all the time with patents.

I mean, for example, selective frame skipping is an exemplary feature? Emulators have been doing this since the early 90s -- probably earlier but I wouldn't know for sure.

This.

 

[7DollarHagane]

This is about protecting themselves in the case that they saw need to pursue legal action against the litany of illegal android and iOS emulators that are for sale.

Say someone sold and emulator and included "420mario" as a ROM with drug references.. This kind of patent would help with litigation.

 

[CO_Andy]

I spot a Sega Genesis controller!

 

[Purkake4]

Nintendo following the time-honored tradition of being years late to the party.