Nintendo has filed over 30 Tears of the Kingdom patents, registering things you wouldn't even notice in the game
Nintendo has filed over 30 Tears of the Kingdom patents, registering things you wouldn't even notice in the game
This article takes the interesting perspective of an anti-consumer bootlicker.
Full text:
Nintendo appears to be on a patent-registering spree as it files over 30 patents related to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
As reported by Automaton, from July 10 - August 4, Nintendo made public a total of 32 patents - 31 of those relating to Tears of the Kingdom. It's not rare or even surprising for Nintendo to claim ownership of its ideas and prevent anyone from copying its homework but the amount of patents, as well as what exactly it is Nintendo has decided to patent, is what's interesting about this lot of filings.
For instance, Link's Ultrahand and Fuse abilities, some of the game's mechanics, NPCs' abilities, and even its loading screens have all been filed for patent by Nintendo. Some of the other elements of the game Nintendo wants to keep safe include Riju’s lightning attack and some of the technical elements of the game that allow Link to interact with the world around him (eg: standing on moving objects, gripping onto ledges, etc.)
It's interesting to see what Nintendo wants to keep for itself in potential future iterations of the Zelda series or just its other games in general - especially since the majority of these things would go totally unnoticed by the average player. We've seen a lot of patents linked to well, Link, in the past but this is the first bout we've found after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, so they probably don't hint towards anything in terms of future content.
It actually makes a lot of sense why Nintendo would be so protective over the inner workings of its game (although this isn't limited to just Tears of the Kingdom or Zelda games in general). For starters, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom has already sold two-thirds of what Breath of the Wild managed in six years - just in case you forgot, the Breath of the Wild sequel was released less than three months ago. So it's probably fair that Nintendo doesn't want anyone stealing its ideas for their own games.
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Here's the original article:
https://automaton-media.com/en/news/20230808-20590/
Sounds like Nintendo wants to go on a litigation spree.
A related patent defines a mechanic that prevents Link from grabbing an object he is on top of using Ultrahand, which also seems rather intuitive. The patent does, however, go into details such as the mechanic also blocking Link from using Ultrahand on objects which have been joined to an object he is on top of.
The word "obvious" comes to mind.
“a game processing method capable of enriching game presentation during a waiting period in which at least part of the game processing is interrupted” and consists of filling up the loading period that ensues after the user inputs their fast travel destination with a sequence in which an image of the starting point’s map transitions into a map of the destination. After this sequence, the character is placed into the virtual space of the destination.
So, that thing films have been doing for decades?
I hope the patent examiners have some sense in their heads when considering these.
I will say that map loading screen thing is obvious but I've never seen it before in a video game and it was a small detail I really loved.
Yes, it's nice.
Thankfully, we can appreciate things that are obvious or aren't novel without granting a society-funded monopoly on them. In fact, both those criteria generally disqualify them from patent, for good reason.
Good point. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely not in support of them getting a patent for it, and I'm against patents in general. I'm just saying I loved it more than I expected, and want to see it more.