Apple Racks Up the Gaming Patents

An anonymous reader writes "Evidence has been growing that Apple is developing a new gaming console. Now, there are some possible details about how a combined media/game console might work, based on patent applications filed by Apple in late 2007 and early 2008. Here is some of what we can look for: having your personal music integrated into a title, a 'natural' gesture multitouch interface, and a single online store that sells games, media, and video."

Comments

Cause someone will bring this up:

[denttford]

Apple's other attempt to enter the gaming market.

As much as I dislike their products, if Apple goes after the Wii with stong iTunes and iPhone/Pod integration, as a gaming and convergence device, they could hurt Nintendo. The saturated market isn't an issue when you can lower the standard of definition and quadruple the market space (e.g. the "smartphone" market).
They will probably have to kill Apple TV, though.

Re:Cause someone will bring this up:

[denttford]

No, it does better than expected as a niche product. Still, I suspect a PVR+iTunes frontend+Gaming platform with strong iPod tie ins and in HD would sell very well. It would be a major initiative, and I doubt Apple would let a "hobby project" dilute that market.

Re:Cause someone will bring this up:

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with Apple entering that market: price. One of Nintendo's biggest selling points is their price. If Apple continues with their buy-in-club pricing mentality (and we have no reason to believe that they won't), then I highly doubt Nintendo has much to worry about.

Re:Cause someone will bring this up:

[Moryath]

One of the most underutilized - but most fun - options on the original Xbox was the ability of certain games (especially the Tony Hawk series) to replace the default "in-game" music with music ripped from CD's. Make a custom CD with your own chosen playlist, drop it on the box, and boom, you had a completely different experience. I couldn't stand half of the crap-rap they put in, for instance, but I could tell it "never play" those songs, and add in, say, a bunch of Frank Sinatra to the list, or pretty much anything else I decided to put in.

I wish more games had that option. It's one thing if you have a cutscene with dedicated music or something, but something else for sports games or games that wind up trying to have a "top 40s" playlist stuck in as an afterthought. I know I, personally, get bored with games quicker if I don't like the music that's being blared.

Re:Cause someone will bring this up:

[jolson74]

Actually... one thing really cool about the Xbox 360 is that if you are playing your own music (either from the hard disk, from a PC via Media Center, or from an MP3 player connected via USB) it will override the soundtrack of whatever game you are playing. But you still get all of the other game sounds (voices, sound effects, etc.).

Without that feature, I think 'Burnout: Paradise' would have driven me insane.

Re:Cause someone will bring this up:

[Cillian]

Playing gears of war 2 with a friend while listening to abba and other cheesy music was rather amazing and one of the most fun experiences I've had gaming.

Thought we already had an Apple console...

[Bieeanda]

...in the Xbox 360. It's white, has a circular interface on the front panel, and as Apple considers the iPods, the RROD makes it disposable.

Re:Thought we already had an Apple console...

[Tarlus]

Woah... you did NOT just call Apple and Microsoft the same thing... on Slashdot of all places! ;)

Re:Thought we already had an Apple console...

[ActusReus]

Sigh... in the not-so-distant past, when the Slashdot community was oriented around open vs. proprietary discussions, Microsoft and Apple very much WAS considered to occupy the same basic space.

These days Slashdot is all about piracy, fads and rumors in social networking sites, and discussions about marketing. The occasional GPL vs. BSD/MIT/Apache flamewar still sprouts up, but mostly it's just fanboys praising or bad-mouthing various shiny objects on the basis of how "sexy" they are.

Apple sells "better" stuff, Microsoft sells "more" stuff. Other than that, yeah... they are pretty much the same thing.

Integrating your personal music into the game?

[b96miata]

Sounds like something the 360 does right now.

Maybe the patent covers a system whereby you're forced to pay the console maker for the music you want to integrate.

Does it even need new hardware?

[Sockatume]

All of the stuff mentioned there could apply equally well to the iPhone and iPod Touch, which Apple have been positioning as proper gaming devices anyway.

Community Games on Xbox 360

[tepples]

Something seems incredibly interesting about the prospect of a game console with an iPhone like app/game store. I could definitely see myself buying one if they do come out, especially if I could easily program my own games for it.

Given that the app store for the iPod Touch uses almost the same business model as the "Community Games" store for the Xbox 360, I'd recommend that you buy an Xbox 360. Like the iPod Touch, the Xbox 360 needs a specific host operating system (Windows) to run the developer tools, and running your code on the console requires a $100/year developer certificate.

Re:Model, view, and controller

[Actually, I do RTFA]

First, separate your game into model, view, and controller components

It's not that simple. The view is pretty complex in games. The controller has to include networking, file i/o, actually controller input and mapping to a unique internal method.

Physics, AI, and map decoding go in the model so that they're identical across platforms

Nice if true, but it's not. Different chipsets (x64, x86 and PowerPC) all require tweaks to the underlying math libraries to optimize performance. Sometimes those tweaks propogate up.

only part of the view and controller need to be written in Objective-C.

Without knowing exactly the dividing line, I can say that those components are pretty complicated. So why should we have to use Objective-C at all? Why should I have to have some other language anywhere in my build?

XNA on Xbox 360, on the other hand, needs games to be ported to the CLR.

XNA is optional. Objective-C is manditory.

Apple looking at EA?

[Phroggy]

I was about to dismiss it as unsubstantiated speculation, but I just saw an article claiming that Apple may want to acquire EA. That would fit in VERY nicely with designing their own game console, which I imagine would replace AppleTV.

Wow. Apple buying Twitter would be silly, but Apple buying EA could totally change the landscape.

one way to get more games written...

[je ne sais quoi]

The only trick would be convincing game developers to write anything for a platform with fewer users.

You should definitely read this then. The rumor on the street is that Apple might buy EA. Now, I know better than to listen to these types of rumors, but if that did happen, they would suddenly have a lot of games being written for them. Who knows if this is true or not, but it is makes a hell of a lot more sense than Apple buying Twitter of all things.