Nintendo patents football controller, looks a lot like a football

by Richard Mitchell on Aug 25th 2009 10:00PM

At some point, it really behooves a gamer to ask the question, "How many peripherals is enough peripherals?" The Wii remote is a pretty sweet piece of technology. We get that. The nunchuk adds some much-needed flexibility, sure. MotionPlus adds some extra sensitivity for 1:1 play. Okay, we all want that, right? But a football?

Siliconera reports that Nintendo vice president of R&D, Howard Cheng, has submitted a patent for a Wii football peripheral. Specifically, it's a football shaped shell for the Wii remote with different variations, like the tweaked MotionPlus version featured above. The patent cites different examples of how to use the peripheral. Obviously, throwing motions are mentioned. The Wii remote could also detect body motion and interpret it as "running." Call us cynics, but can't the Wii remote do all of that without a squishy football wrapped around it?

Then again, it's probably awesome for Punch-OutII.

Source

Tags: football, Nintendo, patent, peripherals, Wii

Reader Comments (67)

but... but... where's the controller condom? it needs it.

With balls as big as these, nobody tells Nintendo he needs to put a condom on his Wii.

wow, excellent execution...

MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE! MAKE IT STOP!!!

Thanks!

It will stop when these obnoxious patents are rejected by the USPTO for being obvious.

If you patent a chair, I cannot then patent a chair with arms. The wiimote is the chair. All these peripherals are simply chairs with arms.

Feel free to interchange Microsoft or Sony in with Nintendo at any point in the following:

Stop bitching. Its either nintendo puts a patent on it or some other company does and just sits on it til nintendo wants to actually do something with the design. Then the third party company sues nintendo for an idea they were never going to use in the first place. we have all seen it plenty of times.

"Stop bitching."

No.

"Its either nintendo puts a patent on it or some other company does and just sits on it til nintendo wants to actually do something with the design."

So let me get this straight: You actually consider a football with a strap and a slot for a controller to be...worthy of a patent? And as I have said before, the difference between Nintendo's silly patents and Sony/MS stupid patents is that largely the latter try to patent goofy things with more than one use.

"How do I play?"

"You throw the ball to your friends!"

"You mean, exactly like I do in real life?"

"Yeah! Isn't this cooler than being outside?"

No, you throw the football through the TV! Isn't it obvious!

People have been doing this without the football carrier since day 1.

Ring ring ring ring ring ring ring! Football Phone! Hoot Hooka Dooka Doot!

You know, all these controller gloves and such will end up in the landfill next to the E.T. carts.

Hopefully there's a 'phone' jacket, so the little guy can phone home.

HIYO!!!

I was thinking the same thing, my friend.

Humanity is dead to me now.

It's been dead for a while, friend.
Now it's smelly carcass is become apparent.

In other news. The Powerglove.
Was a bad idea 20 years ago.
And this is just as bad.
Strangely, very similar.

Now I am thinking of a Nerf Football...

1. Buy Nerf football
2. Get Wii MotionPlus
3. Get masking tape
4. Tape together
5. Aim at TV
6. Throw at TV
7. ???
8. Profit

*smh*

I think Nintendo pisses peripherals.

Sadly, the money they make from said peripherals, allows them to wipe their big fat ass with 100 dollar bills.

Pisses them? I had enough trouble passing a kidney stone, but if they're passing footballs and Balance Boards...

how do you play defense? Shoulder pad accessory?

You tackle the Wii-it's so effective, the other team stops playing!

It's absurd that you can even patent useless shit like this.

You can't. These peripherals will be rejected for being obvious. See my reply to Laughton above.

You have more faith then me. I've seen countless obvious patents.

*than

i'd be pretty interested in playing mario football, of coarse not with this thing, but yeah.

Wow.

Maybe this is an attempt to stop the crappy peripherals from being released by 3rd parties. As in, when they try to sell them, Nintendo will turn the tables and pull a copyright infringement case of their own this time!

This actually makes the most sense, I mean look at hose many of those sterring wheels showed up after the first wii racing game hit the streets. then it was the tennis and golfing attachments. they're just trying to force people to pay them for using these ideas.

If Nintendo keeps on patenting stuff like this, some people will never come out of their homes again.

Oh, and Nintendo, how's the new Zelda game for Wii coming along? What's you say? Production hasn't started yet? Because you're too busy making peripherals? Cut the crap, and let's get with the program here.

"Cut the crap, and let's get with the program here."

friend as much as i (and TONS of others) would love to see that, it's just not happening this generation. next generation? sure why not! but certainly not this generation. sure we'll get a few solid game's here and there, but i honestly believe Nintendos sticking to their game plan. sigh but i REALLY would like for the big N to get it into gear.

Everybody always acts like Nintendo is making less of its main games, but this isn't really the case. If you compare the amount of "main" Nintendo games released on the Wii so far, its probably around the same as the N64 and Gamecube were after the same amount of time.

It's been in production for some time, they just haven't shown anything beyond that bit of art. It was well under way as of E3, but they decided not to show it because the team didn't feel like taking the time out of the dev cycle just to make a demo or a trailer.

imagine a different peripheral for every warioware minigame

a chilling vision of nintendo's future

This is so stupid that it hurts my brain.

Seriously, I saw this and now there's a sharp pain behind my eyes! OW! OW! OW!

*facepalm*

This sounds oddly similar to a spot that was on the Science Channel's "Popular Science: Future of" series from a week ago featuring a "smart football" with accelerometers built into it for virtual coaching.

This is Larry's.

No, this is LES BOS!

This is madness.

Anyone else care to finish?

This reminds me of that smart football...

except... it's just a wiimote attached to it instead of being wired from the inside.

...... let's make it shoot rockets?

Hooray for pointless plastic trash.

And make sure to preorder 'Guitar Hero 6: The Monkees.'

I can see the commercial now, "Now fatass you too can live out your frustrated highschool hopes and dreams from the sofa without any particular set of skills! Buy Wii Suck today for 49.99"

> a BJ to the wiimote

This friends is why we can't have nice things. What are we 12 here?

This IS Japan we're talking about here. Chances are you can already import that game if you're so inclined.

I laughed at first, but that's it, why complain about something that's obviously not aimed at me?

Not to mention the fact that it's just a patent. No one said it's coming at all.

Nintendo: Look what I made Joystiq, it's a football!
Joystiq: It's just a peripheral Nintendo YOU didn't make it
Nintendo: But I patented it!

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Nintendo patents football controller, looks a lot like a football

Reader Comments (67)

Posted: Aug 25th 2009 10:02PM Sly C said

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