It's been said elsewhere, but I'm pretty sure this is not so Nintendo can release emulators for smart phones, but more likely to shut out anyone else who does.
I do not think nintendo is going to release an emulator as we know it. Its either a tactic to remove other emulators off google play or maybe they will release virtual console games for android. It definitely wont be an emulator that will play roms that we can freely download off the internet
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Judging from the photos on the page, they might be coming out with a Gameboy shell to use as a controller in conjunction with your Droid. Maybe even a special controller for the PC, and for planes.
I see no reason for this not to take off on planes!
I see no reason for this not to take off on planes!
lol no way its going to be a use your roms emulator. siding with the 'remove emulators from play store' people.
Basically this, since Nintendo's Virtual Console was an emulator and they could patent it. Current emulators will stay on the shop, but new ones won't be made.
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Yes, these will most likely play as VC's. Not traditional emulators, but emulators written to play specific games.
Nintendos just patent trolling.... Companies do this all the time and when the US patent office approves such a bs patent, it reminds me why i disapprove of our givernment,
Nobody should be able to patent something created by someone else, its preposterous
It's not just that. It looks like nintendo is trying to patent the very concept of emulation.
At best, nintendo is blaming emulation for their current shortfall and this is just a token gesture to appease the shareholders.
At worst, nintendo is going to sue everyone who made a nintendo system (nes, snes, ect) emulator for any device.
They can't actually do anything about any current emulators that don't use any of Nintendo's code. A patent can't affect anything that was already on the market/in existence for others to use. At least part of the US patent system and laws and such isn't absolute crap.
i'm pretty sure theres that loophole where you can bring the matter to court anyways and, since the other side usually lacks the money to battle the legal battle, it has to yield one way or another.
care to explain what you mean by that? i thought they were doing quite well recently
The last quarter at least wasn't kind to them. 3DS sales were down and not acting as the usual financial cushion that they have been, and although the Wii U sold better than it did during the same period last year, it was still crap sales so it didn't matter much. Nintendo is still set to make a profit, at least, but not as much of one as they were projecting by what is likely considered to be a substantial margin.
Edit: So it could be seen as Nintendo going after emulation in order to increase VC sales on their handheld and console, but I'm hoping Nintendo isn't stupid enough to think a simple patent will ever make a difference.
Sure I do, I still have some Soundblasters around for my retro PCs
Looks like the guy who patented this is still stuck in the 90s
IMHO, I'm calling Nintendo Classics on smartphones - that would bring in the MAD MONIES and make happy the shareholders.
Ladies, gentlemen and robots, I present software patents.
http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...s1=Nintendo.AS.&OS=AN/Nintendo&RS=AN/Nintendo seems to be the one people are looking at. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0349751.html is probably a better link to it.
Looks like another patent I can shoot down, though how Nintendo's own GB player (screens were available unofficially and supposedly an official version was on the books) or http://www.siliconera.com/2008/01/07/the-gba-lives-inside-car-headrests/ (an official/licensed device) did not count as every type of prior art I do not know (they seem to be going for more accurate, possibly even cycle accurate, emulation rather than straight up hardware, a novel approach in this day and age when everybody is building a chip for something). Filing date on this patent was "23rd of June, 2014" by the way, though some related patents appear as early as 2000 (not sure if they managed to avoid being tripped up via their own prior art-- if memory serves in the US you can avoid that if you file within two years of your existing one being filed or something).
The interesting claim (and apparently the only one still standing) is
"17. A method of adapting an emulator, the method comprising: executing, on a processor, an emulator capable of running a plurality different binary applications; recognizing, by the processor, an identity of a binary application based on an inspection of the binary application; automatically adapting, by the processor, a behavior of the emulator to the binary application based on the recognized identity of the binary application; and generating, by the processor, an audio visual presentation using the adapted behavior of the emulator. "
Now I am not sure if this is some kind of encoding detection on steroids (and if not completely obvious to any remotely knowledgeable person in the field then compiler design of the late 80's probably has prior art in spades), Nintendo trying to patent dynamic recompilation or them trying a fancy method in which everybody else in the world would just use a header* and tying one of those three into what everybody else would recognise as a dynamically linked library is possibly up for debate.
*header stuff
http://problemkaputt.de/pandocs.htm#thecartridgeheader
http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#gbacartridgeheader
That would be the header types of the GB, GBC and GBA. As everything they would throw at it should be a legit ROM it will have a header value*, I reckon there might be a one if check method of doing it but five if checks would be more than enough to tell everything you want to know about it, and probably come as part of your emulator anyway.
*maybe not multiboot and there is official multiboot code so I might get to tone it down a notch.
Either way the patent introduction as sales patch for a device/company is one I have not seen the most of. That amused me. I can only hope if/when it comes to court they are not able to pull the proverbial wool over the eyes of a judge and say "all these emulators are inaccurate, look how many of them there are".
http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-...s1=Nintendo.AS.&OS=AN/Nintendo&RS=AN/Nintendo seems to be the one people are looking at. http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0349751.html is probably a better link to it.
Looks like another patent I can shoot down, though how Nintendo's own GB player (screens were available unofficially and supposedly an official version was on the books) or http://www.siliconera.com/2008/01/07/the-gba-lives-inside-car-headrests/ (an official/licensed device) did not count as every type of prior art I do not know (they seem to be going for more accurate, possibly even cycle accurate, emulation rather than straight up hardware, a novel approach in this day and age when everybody is building a chip for something). Filing date on this patent was "23rd of June, 2014" by the way, though some related patents appear as early as 2000 (not sure if they managed to avoid being tripped up via their own prior art-- if memory serves in the US you can avoid that if you file within two years of your existing one being filed or something).
The interesting claim (and apparently the only one still standing) is
"17. A method of adapting an emulator, the method comprising: executing, on a processor, an emulator capable of running a plurality different binary applications; recognizing, by the processor, an identity of a binary application based on an inspection of the binary application; automatically adapting, by the processor, a behavior of the emulator to the binary application based on the recognized identity of the binary application; and generating, by the processor, an audio visual presentation using the adapted behavior of the emulator. "
Now I am not sure if this is some kind of encoding detection on steroids (and if not completely obvious to any remotely knowledgeable person in the field then compiler design of the late 80's probably has prior art in spades), Nintendo trying to patent dynamic recompilation or them trying a fancy method in which everybody else in the world would just use a header* and tying one of those three into what everybody else would recognise as a dynamically linked library is possibly up for debate.
*header stuff
http://problemkaputt.de/pandocs.htm#thecartridgeheader
http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#gbacartridgeheader
That would be the header types of the GB, GBC and GBA. As everything they would throw at it should be a legit ROM it will have a header value*, I reckon there might be a one if check method of doing it but five if checks would be more than enough to tell everything you want to know about it, and probably come as part of your emulator anyway.
*maybe not multiboot and there is official multiboot code so I might get to tone it down a notch.
Either way the patent introduction as sales patch for a device/company is one I have not seen the most of. That amused me. I can only hope if/when it comes to court they are not able to pull the proverbial wool over the eyes of a judge and say "all these emulators are inaccurate, look how many of them there are".
Nintendo may have stabalized their losses, but they are by no means doing well.
Even if they were making a profit, they would still fall short of shareholder expectations.
Shareholders don't just want profit, they want all of the profit.
Nintendo made massive profit from the wii and ds, now shareholders expect every product nintendo release to meet or exceed those results. The threat of a shareholder revolt looms larger with every quarterly report that fails to meet those expectations.
Corporate executives don't like to admit when they fuck up, but they know that they could be voted out by the shareholders and replaced at any time. This leads to executives making excuses or half-assed business plans in an attempt to placate angry shareholders.
"Game sales aren't down because we make shitty games, it's because of piracy."
"Every rom or emulator that is downloaded equals a lost virtual console sale."
May not be the truth, but they have to show the shareholders that they are doing "something" to restore profitability to the company.
Sure I do, I still have some Soundblasters around for my retro PCs
Looks like the guy who patented this is still stuck in the 90s
IMHO, I'm calling Nintendo Classics on smartphones - that would bring in the MAD MONIES and make happy the shareholders.
Wasn't this originally patented in 1999?
Edit: Uh, my post was moved here and didn't make much sense.
Anyway, here's a Forum Post on NeoGAF with excerpts from the patent and an article on TheDailyDot regarding the topic.
Anyway, here's a Forum Post on NeoGAF with excerpts from the patent and an article on TheDailyDot regarding the topic.
Similar threads
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Psionic Roshambo:
One thing that just occurred to me.... The sound on the 2600 sucked less back then the harsh sound we hear now is from infinitely better speakers we have now, back when the 2600 was new speakers produced a almost muffled sound, like CRTs made old graphics look slightly better. -
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Psionic Roshambo:
I wonder if I could recommend that to some emulation devs that perhaps the sound could use some smoothing out to simulate those old TVs
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Psionic Roshambo:
I think a few of the early systems could benefit from that, at least up to the 8 bit generation, by the 16 bit generation I think TVs had gotten a lot better in almost every way
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Xdqwerty:
it says it only works for the original R4, R4i Gold (r4ids.cn), R4iDSN (r4idsn.com) and Acekard R.P.G. -
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Psionic Roshambo:
Just give it a try, but honestly if you have a 3DS you can play DS games without a card just off the internal SD card
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