Wii U discussion and upcoming news

[Conando]

European courts tend to play the favorite for European countries, Philips is a Germany based country so some judges seriously just award things out of bias.

[WarioBone]

Banned?

 

Like, they're going to take them from people?

 

Also, who drew that diagram?  A fucking two-year-old?

[VO.SUPER]

European courts tend to play the favorite for European countries, Philips is a Germany based country so some judges seriously just award things out of bias.

 

That sounds so much like what happened to Nintendo in the 80s when they were being accused of starting a monopoly for being a Japanese company making success in the US. 

[Blue Blood]

Banned?

Like, they're going to take them from people?

Also, who drew that diagram? A fucking two-year-old?

Banned like they will have to be taken off the market. They wouldn't be able to take them back off people, not would that even be considered.

And have you never seen a drawing for a patent before?

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Philips will have a harder time winning in the US than they did in England. In fact it's shocking Philips even won in the UK, considering how the patents are incredibly vague and don't really describe a Wii Remote or Wii U Game Pad at all. Anyway, though they did win in England, Nintendo instantly appealed and now Philips can't do anything for 2 years. They could theoretically keep appealing until the Wii U is out of production, and Philips wouldn't be able to do a damn thing.

 

That doesn't make any sense. Philips won the case, Nintendo appeals, Phillips cannot do anything for 2 years while the Wii U still remains in stores? What was the point for Philips to do this? I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Otherwise all Apple's patent cases with Samsung would not go anywhere while Apple virtually loses since Samsung can appeal and freeze Apple for 2 years (while Samsung phones still go on sale).

[Conando]

Banned?

 

Like, they're going to take them from people?

 

Also, who drew that diagram?  A fucking two-year-old?

They ban shipments of the console into the country. They can't break into your house and steal your Wii U, but they can prevent people from buying any more of them. Still, like I said, they can't do anything for 2 years, and those 2 years are being spent with an appeal by Nintendo of Europe. 

That doesn't make any sense. Philips won the case, Nintendo appeals, Phillips cannot do anything for 2 years while the Wii U still remains in stores? What was the point for Philips to do this? I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Otherwise all Apple's patent cases with Samsung would not go anywhere while Apple virtually loses since Samsung can appeal and freeze Apple for 2 years (while Samsung phones still go on sale).

Samsung didn't try for an appeal, they just settled. Either that or they did, and it was rejected. Nintendo's appeal, however, was already approved. Also, the Apple v. Samsung case was different. Apple went for money right away, and had no intention of banning the sales of Samsung Galaxies it seemed.

 

Edit: There's a bit of confusion here, it seems like Philips didn't look for a ban of Wii U in the UK. It seems they only want to ban it in the US, which seems beyond idiotic.

[Willsy]

God, I really hope that the Wii U isn't banned. That would be really sad, and it would lose Nintendo a lot of money. Can't Philips just accept royalties from them anyway? They're out to make money, so why don't they? Stopping the sales of a console won't make them anything.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Samsung didn't try for an appeal, they just settled. That's why. It costs a significant amount of time and money to appeal a court case, something Samsung wasn't feeling like doing. There was little chance they were going to beat Apple on American soil.

 

 

But isn't Nintendo in a similar position as Samsung? Nintendo is a Japanese-based company, and Philips is an EU company which will be most likely favored. It just doesn't make any sense. Philips can't be this stupid, to try and win the case and nothing happens at the end of it since Nintendo appealed. And Nintendo can just keep spamming until the Wii U is no longer produced. There's something missing here. Otherwise this wouldn't be a big deal.

[Conando]

It's really just a way to squeeze more money out of the settlement they're looking to get. It's basically extortion, albeit somehow legal despite being rather scummy. They probably have no real intention of banning the Wii U, but they're going to use it as a bargaining chip.

But isn't Nintendo in a similar position as Samsung? Nintendo is a Japanese-based company, and Philips is an EU company which will be most likely favored. It just doesn't make any sense. Philips can't be this stupid, to try and win the case and nothing happens at the end of it since Nintendo appealed. And Nintendo can just keep spamming until the Wii U is no longer produced. There's something missing here. Otherwise this wouldn't be a big deal.

 

Read my edit, they apparently didn't have banning the Wii U (in the UK) on the table. It's only in the US, presumably because they hope that's where they can force Nintendo into a settlement since the US is actually a huge part of their market share. It's patent trolling at its finest. Nintendo's only appealing the damages in the UK, to make it so they don't have to pay Philips a dime.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

It's really just a way to squeeze more money out of the settlement they're looking to get. It's basically extortion, albeit somehow legal despite being rather scummy. They probably have no real intention of banning the Wii U, but they're going to use it as a bargaining chip.

 

Read my edit, they apparently didn't have banning the Wii U (in the UK) on the table. It's only in the US, presumably because they hope that's where they can force Nintendo into a settlement since the US is actually a huge part of their market share. It's patent trolling at its finest. Nintendo's only appealing the damages in the UK, to make it so they don't have to pay Philips a dime.

 

I agree that banning the Wii U from sale is beyond pathetic and it's just evil (no other way to look at it).

 

However you said Nintendo's appeal has been successfully approved but I haven't seen that in any article yet. The only thing I saw was Nintendo is planning to appeal, and that could be rejected.

[Conando]

Yeah, I got myself confused with that bit entirely. It applies only to the ruling that they owe Philip's damages, though. Apparently the ban is a U.S. thing only, which is probably due to what I was saying. It's not usually a nice thing to assume, but it seems pretty clear cut here. Though I suppose perhaps the ban was connected to the UK case too, but didn't go through since the judge declared one of the patents was entirely unrelated to Nintendo's products, I believe it was the one that sounded more Kinect like.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

Yeah, I got myself confused with that bit entirely. It applies only to the ruling that they owe Philip's damages, though. Apparently the ban is a U.S. thing only, which is probably due to what I was saying. It's not usually a nice thing to assume, but it seems pretty clear cut here.

 

Ah okay. Now it kinda makes sense what's happening and why Phillps are suing Nintendo.

 

But I wouldn't put too much worry on them banning the consoles in the US. There will be no biased, favored nonsense here. But what I'm worried about is them also trying ban the consoles in France and Germany since they are too EU countries and Philips is German.

 

P.S - If the France and Germany thing is new to you guys, here is the link.

[Conando]

That IS an issue. If they win in even one country, with that on the table, they do have the ability to really put the screws on Nintendo. It would make their planned appeal, in the UK, far more likely to be rejected too. Seriously though, I have to wonder how hurting for money Philips can be that they want to shake down Nintendo this badly. I certainly haven't seen anything but light bulbs from them in the US. That article does raise higher hopes for the US, though. None of these patents are anywhere close to a "complete invention", and a similar suit was recently shut down hard in Texas.

[Willsy]

Do Philips even have the money to take Nintendo to court though? Last I heard they were financially struggling and they don't make much anymore. I assume they would want to go quite far with this, which means they would probably be paying their lawyers quite a lot.....well...if they have the decency to even do that.

Long story short, they would have just saved money if they didn't take Nintendo to court.

[Conando]

I think it is ridiculously risky to try and sue them in so many countries at least. If they lose in America, and it's looking likely they will, Nintendo will instantly counter sue them for damages.

[Willsy]

And Philips is not a stable company at all. If Nintendo counter sue them for a large sum, they are in trouble. Nintendo are a bigger company than them nowadays with more money. Trying to leech off them to get some of that money could really end up hurting Philips if Nintendo gets an advantage.

[Conando]

I'm not quite sure Nintendo is actually bigger than Philips, but they're not in that great os shape yeah. They're total assets is like 31 billion, which is incredibly small for a conglomerate. For the record, Sony is considered in dire straits and they have almost 5 times that amount of money.

[Ming Ming Hatsune]

It will be stupid for Phillips to try and sue Nintendo in America. Stupid. Very risky indeed, and they will most likely not succeed.

 

I'm just worried for EU right now. The Wii U is in big trouble there.

[Conando]

True enough. It's Nintendo's smallest market, but it's not a good thing for them to get into a struggle right when they just started making a profit again.

[Mr Loopone]

I'm actually surprised that Philips haven't gone for Microsoft and Sony as well considering that some of their patent seems in parts similar to the Move and the Kinect especially for the latter being more similar to the rejected patent. Regarding the Wii U though even though it has already passed in England; there is still France, Germany and the US to consider, if it gets rejected Nintendo is safe. Since Philips is a Dutch company, there might be a possibility that it could get passed in France and Germany but struggle in the US depending on which court (they are using the Court of Delaware) and in the past Philips were innovators of products making various products with a strong R&D [they pretty much invented the CD] including some that never were such as an almost flat CRT but had to be cancelled due to the rise of LCD TVs. Who knows what other types of products that Philips were working on. Personally I don't think the Wii U is going to get banned and most will be either Philips gaining or losing money. If it is referring to the original Wii as well, the product is getting closer to discontinued anyway and a ban would seem small considering that fewer people are buying it (most of the sales were 2006-2012).

 

There could be a positive out of this though, since Nintendo is getting into the QoL phase and Philips makes healthcare products (more than just the shavers but medical products for hospitals/clinics) maybe the two can make a settlement? Philips did try to get a settlement for 3 years and pretty much what they wanted but Nintendo being themselves refused.

 

Anyway have been testing Brain Training (that is free at the moment), it seems okay and surprisingly enjoying Sudoku since they explained it very well. The main problem would be when it comes to the voice and since my voice is hard to understand (when I tried Brain Training years ago, it couldn't recognise my voice at all), worried that I might not be able to enjoy part of the program... Still for free, can't complain too much and it is cheaper than buying a newspaper/book to do Sudoku.

[Milo]

Also, who drew that diagram?  A fucking two-year-old?

 

 

And have you never seen a drawing for a patent before?

 

In Buttsteak's defense, a fair amount of patent diagrams do look less crude than the posted example.

 

 

[Conando]

Philips hasn't gone at Sony and Microsoft because they would be crushed by them, regardless of region. Microsoft especially, they would hit them so hard they would no doubt reeling for years.

[VO.SUPER]

This is actually more hints to Nintendo's next idea for a console handheld hybrid. The chalk is on the board for sure now. They're gonna do a handheld console hybrid for their next console that has better integration than the 3DS and Wii U have had. 

 

Coming from a Kotaku interview with Shigeru Miyamoto...

So, certainly if you look at the show floor, currently the games are designed for the systems they're running on. There are games that in a way take advantage of being on a higher-spec machine that plays on a TV and there are games that are designed to play better on a portable machine. But certainly we've gotten to an age where the technology has advanced and it's become more and more possible to have a similar experience running on a lower-spec system. And even within the Wii U itself we have the Virtual Console, which sort of is an exhibit of how you can have one type of play that is at a higher-spec level and another type of play at a lower-spec level as well. So certainly I think there is possibility in that area in the future.

So, this is a bit of a tangent, but five years ago I think the industry was at a point where many game developers felt that, if they weren't creating games for the highest-spec machine, then they weren't going to get work, that the business would go away.

But over the last five years we've seen that the range of devices that they develop for has expanded, so they're able to decide if they want to create something that is very high spec type of game or something that is for a lower-spec device. So I just think it's good to see the freedom of choice that developers now have.

What I can say is, certainly, within Nintendo the fact that our development environment for our home console is different from the development environment for our portable system is certainly an area of stress or challenge for the development teams. So as we move forward, we're going to look at what we can do to unify the two development environments.

So, particularly with digital downloads now and the idea that you're downloading the right to play a game, that opens up the ability to have multiple platform digital downloads where you can download on one and download on another. Certainly from a development standpoint there is some challenge to it, because if you have two devices that have different specs and you're being told to design in a way that the game runs on both devices, then that can be challenging for the developer—but if you have a more unified development environment and you're able to make one game that runs on both systems instead of having to make a game for each system, that's an area of opportunity for us. 

 

[8ther]

Hopefully it'll be powerful enough to compete with the ps5 and XBox Two.

[VO.SUPER]

Hopefully it'll be powerful enough to compete with the ps5 and XBox Two.

 

The chances of that are looking higher. My guess is they will use similar tech that they've been using for the gamepad for this hybrid and by then the price for making it will be cheaper and thus the system can be stronger. (Though I expect it to not be "as" powerful; just very close.)