Nintendo has filed a bizzare new patent for an external computing device. According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s official website, Nintendo wants to protect their idea of a “supplemental computing device for game consoles.” It sounds vaguely reminiscent of what Microsoft is seeking to do with its cloud based rendering, only locally.
The filing goes on to explain that the device is to assist a game console in “locally executing the game” over a physical interface. It’s hard to tell just what they plan on doing with this technology at this point, but one wonders if this will be part of their NX project, even if it ends up being released post-launch.
The patent goes on to claim that the supplemental device will also support a second console via a wireless interface. This could be good for Nintendo, who likes to offer different perpsectives to their players in asymmetric games, and could bridge two consoles together at a more affordable price. But, at this point, we can only speculate. It’s possible this patent won’t be something that comes to fruition and could just be an instance of a company protecting one of its longshot ideas.