DS Patents Confuse Infendo Reporter

Staff 10 Comments 737 views Infendo

So DS Advanced has posted a patent they found on the US Patent & Trademark Office’s webpage of a touch-screen input technology that Nintendo made in July of 2004 and filed for a year later. It’s difficult to say weather or not the patent is for something coming out in the future, like a 3rd DS redesign, or if these schematics are some old plan, eclipsed by the DS Lite. The patent mainly details technology that gives players ability to use more than one input (I.E. two fingers or styli) to affect game play instead of just one.
Two things about this patent confuse me. Besides the omission of the X and Y buttons from the DS’s right side, is the fact that as far as I can tell, “dual fingered” input can be added to a track/touch device through software. My Powerbook G4 for instance, was released two years before Apple implimented two fingered scrolling in their Powerbook line, but all it took was some third party software to install it in my older machine. It should stand to reason that if a game wanted to use this kind of input they could have the software for it programed into the cart. Plus, isn’t finger-on-DS usage discouraged in the manual? Discuss!

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10 Comments

  1. “It should stand to reason that if a game wanted to use this kind of input they could have the software for it programed into the cart.”

    That is actually incorrect. The DS touch screen actually only accepts one point of contact, like most touch screens on the market. The touch pad on the Powerbook is not the same as a touch screen.

    Single point of contact is mainly down to cost. Multipoint touch screens tend to be expensive.

    Bottom line; the capability cannot be added via software.

  2. I may be getting my wires crossed, but the way I’d originally heard about this patent, it was suggested to me that it was going to be dual touch screens, not dual input on one screen. Not sure how you’d work that when you have to hold the console in one hand to start with.

  3. Multiplayer, silly. ^_^

  4. Two players on one touch screen? Wouldn’t that be a bit…cramped?

  5. Does anyone remember when their was the leaked DS speck sheet? If I remember correctly, it force Nintendo to anounce it. Anyway in the input section it listed :face button: A,B (X,Y being considdered)” or something to that sentiment. So I’m guessing it’s old and outdated from the buttons shown and the filing date.

  6. Also notice the very GBA (original) style D-pad, buttons (espesially the start and select) and speaker. And lack of GBA slot. I’m guessing they droped the multiple inputs late in development due to prohibitive costs.

  7. check out the date 😉

  8. hahahahaha- love the headline.

  9. Mr Eel, thanks for clarifying the techno stuff.
    A lot of people are speculating that these are indeed really old schematics but they only just surfaced in the public eye so even if they are old, it’s interesting to look out what was planned in comparison to what we have now.

  10. look at this one:

    new apple patent
    http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/69318

    Methods and systems for processing touch inputs are disclosed. The invention in one respect includes reading data from a multipoint sensing device such as a multipoint touch screen where the data pertains to touch input with respect to the multipoint sensing device, and identifying at least one multipoint gesture based on the data from the multipoint sensing device.

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