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Some of Nintendo’s patent applications filed by regarding its upcoming Switch console have made their way online, providing those eager to get a sense of what to expect from Nintendo’s new console a chance to look at what the company are aiming to do with their hybrid hardware.
These patents were filed last summer, and constitute our first real look at what could be going on with the Switch outside of Nintendo’s flashy trailer. Nintendo will be showing off everything to do with the Nintendo Switch at a January event, but these images of patents made their way to NeoGAF.
We don’t have the full details on what the Switch will entail, and there’s no guarantee that what they show us in January will look anything like the patents shown, however what Nintendo have shown so far suggest that this could be pretty close to the final product.
You can see the patents by clicking through to NeoGAF.
The things to look at specifically include that the device’s screen has been labelled as a capacitive touchscreen with support for multi-touch input, although the patent reserves the right to switch it out for a resistive touch screen if required, which would be a single-touch screen.
Elsewhere in the patent there’s evidence that the core unit could be slipped into a head mounted display, which is notable because that’s how mobile VR headsets currently function. It’s not a statement of intent from Nintendo, but it is a statement that they’ve thought about how virtual reality might interact with the Switch a little bit.
But this is all speculation for now. Nintendo’s unveil event occurs on the 12th January.
