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:

[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.

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...

[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.

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.