Nintendo files a Gameboy emulator patent for iOS.

[BlueVixen]

It's been reported that Nintendo has created a Gameboy emulator and filed a patent for it, specifically for mobile devices such as Cell Phones and Tablets. This may very well bring the beloved handheld games, much like Pokemon and Legend Of Zelda to our Smartphoes and any other iOS devices.

You can read about here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/28/ninten ... rtainment/

[TheWrongHands]

well, you can't get a patent for software, so assuming they choose to release it, it would be a hardware add-on. although if they choose to, it would also mean the death of their handled consoles as that almost everyone would then expect their games to work on cell phones from that point on.

[napsii]

well, you can't get a patent for software, so assuming they choose to release it, it would be a hardware add-on. although if they choose to, it would also mean the death of their handled consoles as that almost everyone would then expect their games to work on cell phones from that point on.

Disagree. While I think it'll progressively become true that common smartphones can emulate existing systems, what would matter to a company like Nintendo is whether the available technology would live up to their ambitions re: future handheld systems. Since the Gameboy is an ancient piece of hardware which has been perfectly emulated on PCs for years now, reproducing such a thing for iOS isn't a technical landmark. I bet people have already done the exact same in Android, for example.

Sony and Nintendo, among others, will probably always need and want their own proprietary hardware for their handheld projects because no matter how powerful smartphones get, a dedicated machine will always outperform them for purposes of gaming. It also means the sale of their games isn't contingent on owning another company's product, which is an important business consideration; they would like to make money from the sale of their hardware, after all.

[TheWrongHands]

well, you can't get a patent for software, so assuming they choose to release it, it would be a hardware add-on. although if they choose to, it would also mean the death of their handled consoles as that almost everyone would then expect their games to work on cell phones from that point on.

Disagree. While I think it'll progressively become true that common smartphones can emulate existing systems, what would matter to a company like Nintendo is whether the available technology would live up to their ambitions re: future handheld systems. Since the Gameboy is an ancient piece of hardware which has been perfectly emulated on PCs for years now, reproducing such a thing for iOS isn't a technical landmark. I bet people have already done the exact same in Android, for example.

Sony and Nintendo, among others, will probably always need and want their own proprietary hardware for their handheld projects because no matter how powerful smartphones get, a dedicated machine will always outperform them for purposes of gaming. It also means the sale of their games isn't contingent on owning another company's product, which is an important business consideration; they would like to make money from the sale of their hardware, after all.

I'm not entirely sure what it is your disagreeing with exactly, so I'll add a bit more explanation to my statement. Nintendo makes money by selling gaming consoles and games for them. If they sold even one game that wasn't for their console then people would expect even more games that are not for their system. If that system was a smartphone then they would be seriously boned because phones are getting to the point where they can handle serious games and so people would start wondering why they can't just play their DS games on a smartphone. People with smartphones would not buy a DS because they're expecting the games they want to play to come out for their phones. While people with a DS would take that as a signal that their handheld is about to die and would hold off buying more games until they got a better feel for what Nintendo is going to do.

[napsii]

I think you're overestimating the speed at which market forces work. Handheld systems like the 3DS and devices like the iPhone are still fundamentally different enough (as if that weren't really obvious) that people don't consider them interchangeable, and smartphone manufacturers right now have no initiative or incentive to make devices aimed to enable games which aren't like... Candy Crush (the mobile game market is an entirely separate entity from the handheld market) and even if they did, it'd be years before the technology could mature and consumer attitudes began shifting. It's more likely that increasingly sophisticated mobile games are will just be the consequence of more powerful smartphone technology in general (the growth rate of which has slowed in recent years, as I recall).

I think Nintendo and Sony will continue producing their own handheld systems because that's fundamentally the better business strategy, but they'll be marketed as multimedia platforms (music, internet browsing, pictures, etc.) not unlike phones. This trend was already in motion beginning with the PSP, which could do such things, and the 3DS's internet capabilities (eShop, specifically) were probably intended to be an integral part of Nintendo's revenue model.

Basically, you do have a good unwritten idea there vis-a-vis Nintendo and Sony being the ones to apply the market pressure which make things change, which I think is what you see happening right now. But since the next generation of handhelds is far down the line and smartphone development has been stagnant in recent years, you only have further guarantee that if anything changes, it won't be for years.

[TheWrongHands]

I'm not saying that all handheld consoles would die if Nintendo published games for smartphones, just one ones made by Nintendo would. I could be mistaken but it seems to me that there are more people who own a smartphone then there are people who own a DS and that most who do own a DS also own a smartphone. I also think that most people would prefer to invest/carry around just one mobile device if they can. A smartphone comes with a long list of important reasons to carry around while the DS only has it's games. If people saw that Nintendo was willing to put a game on a smartphone then people would demand/assume that more would be on the way and there would be a sharp decline of DS sales.

As for the internal hardware, almost all modern mobile devices use the same basic architecture of a PC with the only real differences being opcodes, speeds, and sizes. As a result we can easily compare the specs of the different devices to determine which is more powerful. Here is a very brief comparison between the iPhone6 and the 3DS:

iPhone6:
CPU:
Cores: 2
Clock Rate: 1.38GHz
Bits: 64
GPU:
Cores: 4
Clock Rate: 650MHz
Ram: 1GB
VRam: ?

3DS:
CPU:
Cores: 2 (Only 1 is available to games)
Clock Rate: 1GHz
Bits: 64
GPU:
Cores: 1
Clock Rate: 400MHz
Ram: 128MB
VRam: 6MB

As you can see from the brief comparison, the iPhone6 is a vastly more powerful gaming machine then the 3DS. A proper port of a game from the 3DS to the iPhone6 would actually encounter the problem of running too fast.

[napsii]

Notwithstanding the (I think near-sighted) view that these devices are nothing more than their most basic internal hardware specifications (since while you're right that all handheld devices are ultimately all just PCs, that means their appeal ultimately lies in technical and aesthetic factors which aren't usually quantified, like ergonomics, power usage or ease/method of developing software for it) you're still assuming that any few games or apps published by Nintendo or Sony is going to trigger an evacuation of 3DS or Vita users to the iPhone... which it won't so long as both companies continue producing handheld systems and games for those systems because they are the market force which would persuade people either way and they have no intention of losing a rich revenue stream to Apple. Instead, I theorised earlier that future Sony/Nintendo handhelds would have more multimedia appeal.

TL;DR - I sense an overreaction and a misunderstanding the appeal of owning a 3DS or a Vita instead of/alongside an iPhone. I have a 9-year old cousin who owns a 3DS, for example -- my aunt wouldn't let her have an iPhone, she likes to play Pokemon, Zelda, etc. and since Legend of Zelda: Skyward Twilight Ocarina or whatever isn't going to be announced as an iOS game (and neither is Majora's Mask HD, for that matter) she doesn't have much of an incentive to get one.

I think this is really just an experiment by Nintendo using what's basically a novelty, not an indication they're going to substitute the 3DS. Emulators have been around forever. Console/PC ports have been around forever. Lots of publishers release little mobile games as companions for their full-size titles/IPs. All have had only modest effects on what hardware people choose to buy.

[TheWrongHands]

Indeed emulation is not a new thing and has been around for years, but so far official support for emulation by console companies has always been only on systems they produce.

As for your cousin, she belongs to a minority group that owns a DS but not a smartphone. This group will of course continue to use and invest in the DS. However the estimated age of the average console owner is between 25 and 40, many of whom require a smartphone for work or something.

I agree this is just an experiment that Nintendo is doing, my whole point is that we'll never see it released.

[napsii]

Did you have any stats about how many 3DS owners also have iPhones, or were you hypothesising? I seem to remember the 3DS being popular with children.

Anyway, Nintendo could sit on the patents for years before they do anything, but it seems to me like an official emulator would be a solid and undemanding business model. Emulation hasn't yet reached the degree of mainstream penetration where the casual observer has an appreciable understanding of it (especially on mobile, where it's mostly outlawed) so there'd be obvious appeal to people who want convenient access to these games, which are simplistic enough to play on iPhone, iPad, etc. (Then again, R* made Vice City playable on iPad, so anything goes.)

[TheWrongHands]

No, i do not have any statistical data about how many people own both a ds and a smartphone, but i do know that as of 2014 about 1.75 billion people own a smartphone world wide while only 1.45 million people own a DS world wide and as that according to Nintendo the average age of a console owner is between 25 and 40, it stands to reason there are more people who own both then just a DS.

However it looks like I was wrong and Nintendo is actually going to be releasing this. I have no idea how they intend to retain any sort of foot hold in the console market with this decision, but I suspect they are going to go the Sega route.

http://www.usgamer.net/articles/ds-game ... s-round-up

[napsii]

You noticed that article was written in January, right? It means the Techcrunch article in the OP is just Nintendo slowly but surely following through on the plans they made in Q1. I never knew they were facing financial troubles, but that reinforces the suggestion that they're just trying to develop new revenue streams. If that investor brief was supposed to indicate Nintendo's intention to let go of the console market (at a time when the Wii U was only a little over a year old, no less) then I'm not sure why they waited 10 months to do anything.

[TheWrongHands]

You right, thought it said 11-30, well that just go to show both how observant I am and how up to date on news I am.

[napsii]

I only noticed because it described MK8 as not yet having been released. I don't keep up with game industry news.

[Zeus Kabob]

I really don't get this article. Not only can software not be patented, but if it's a hardware addon then it's completely redundant considering that a game boy advance emulator already exists for iOS, as with almost every other hardware platform and on many operating systems.

[napsii]

Nintendo's probably gambling on being able to suppress any competing emulators that pop up on the app store, since Apple deletes emulation apps as a matter of course.

[Zeus Kabob]

Nintendo's probably gambling on being able to suppress any competing emulators that pop up on the app store, since Apple deletes emulation apps as a matter of course.

Yeah, but all I'm seeing is that Nintendo is trying to patent troll iOS emulator programmers.

[napsii]

WALUIGI'S GONNA BREAK YA FAKIN LEGS IF YA DON'T AGREE TO SETTLE, BUCKO, WAHAHAHA

[TheWrongHands]

WALUIGI'S GONNA BREAK YA FAKIN LEGS IF YA DON'T AGREE TO SETTLE, BUCKO, WAHAHAHA

waluigi can't afford a tool to do that, which is why Nintendo is doing this in the first place.

as for the device, it might be a processor to allow it to handle the games natively, meaning that what they are calling an emulator is actually a wrapper so that the iOS can handle the games.

[Seiteki-saki]

What if they intend to join the smart phone market? That would be big! It would also, be competing with Microsoft who seem to be headed toward the mobile market for games too.

[TheWrongHands]

What if they intend to join the smart phone market? That would be big! It would also, be competing with Microsoft who seem to be headed toward the mobile market for games too.

it would make me sad to see nintendo go the same way sega did

as for microsoft, they aren't doing well financially and are grasping at anything they think will keep them afloat, so i seriously doubt we'll see anything meaningful come from them.