Having Fun With Nintendo Patents

Recently, a new patent filed by Nintendo surfaced online entails a device that looks a lot like the Nintendo 3DS XL. Apparently, this design has a two screens that are detachable from one another can be played by two people.

Now, it should be noted that patent filings usually are much ado about nothing. It is reasonable to suggest that companies have special groups assigned to come up with ideas regularly. Ideas that actually fit the vision of what the top-brass are looking for make it to the showroom floor. The other ideas that may not be what they want to do right now, or cannot do right now because the idea is too ambitious or expensive, get filed as patents. This basically protects those ideas just in case they want to come back to them later. The vast majority of the time, they don't. We still however can have fun imagining things just for conversation purposes. In regards to this particular design, I have some ideas/theories that may be completely impractical, and difficult to explain to the average consumer, but still something cool to think about. What if, the new Nintendo console is actually an amalgamation of the last 4 pieces of hardware from Nintendo? These drawings indicate a device that looks a lot like a DS in design and shape. The DS family was very successful for Nintendo selling well over 225 million units altogether, and despite the runaway success of the Nintendo Switch, a lot of Nintendo fans miss the DS design. Finding a way to incorporate the DS functionality into the new console I think would be a good idea. The idea that this device can be snapped into two pieces and two people can play off of one device suggests many things. It is foolish to think that Nintendo would put full processing-power in both halves of this machine because that would make it extraordinarily expensive. I think that one piece may have the hardware, and the other piece might be a receptacle, much like the Wii U. Following that, the half with the hardware could be slapped into a dock like the Switch so that you can play it on a TV, but the other piece essentially becomes a Wii U Gamepad, and the docked-portion can take the Joy-Cons off so that others can play with motion-control, or multiplayer much like the Wii and Switch. Now, I must reiterate that this is just fantasy-booking here. NONE of this will probably happen. This is just me free-styling based on a couple of drawing from patents filed by Nintendo that may never see the light of day, and most likely will be buried underneath tons of other patents they have filed over the years.