Project Café Patents Lead to Speculation

In lieu of the madness surrounding the daily Project Café speculation that seems to be plaguing the internet lately, we have more factual madness about Project Café courtesy of a recent patent made public as of the 19^th. While the patent doesn’t specifically name the device, the description sounds pretty damn close to some of the ideas surrounding Project Café.

For the not-so-tech savvy, the abstract might look like mumbo jumbo and nonsense that a car salesmen might spew at you to confuse you into buying an expensive fully-featured car, but it all actually means something and shreds some real truth onto the rumors surrounding Project Café.

The opening abstract talks about a handheld device that communicates wirelessly with the parent device – think GBA and GameCube connectivity without the wires. It also seems that completely removing the “GameCube” part of the equation is possible because the devices can “arbitrarily become the parent device or the child device.” The terms ‘parent’ and ‘child’ refer to the way multiple devices connect to main device. The ‘parent’ would be the singular device that the other ‘child’ devices are connected too. On the child device we’ll be able to control everything that might be going on with the parent. This seems to be the game, usernames, and all of the data being tossed around via Bluetooth between the two.

With the diagrams, we see that the device might hold limitations on the amount of relations between parent and child devices, displaying only four child devices (probably user handhelds) within the display screen, and holding four ports for the parent device to break off into. In the explicit example provided there are “four parent devices, three child devices and one user’s own apparatus.” Assuming that the user apparatus can act as either the parent or the child device, we’re seeing the idea of café gaming that was affectionately hinted towards within the project name, “Project Café.“

This brings to light the question of how many cartridges or games will each device need to have in order to play with multiple people. Interestingly enough, the patent seems to hint at an over-the-air sharing system:

“It is noted that the One-Cartridge Download program is a program for downloading a program into the child device in an OC mode (one-cartridge mode: a mode in which a game cartridge is attached to the parent device only, and the child device is operated in response to a download of a child device-use program from the parent device cartridge).”

All of this communication with downloading and interfacing between the devices is said to be going over a “weak radio-wave” signal between the child and parent devices. This allows for short-range connectivity between each of the Project Café devices.

It seems that the handheld device part of Project Café will be a literal interpretation of the project name. Hear me out here, the device is shown as being able to pick up surrounding user devices as well as parent consoles that will also detect the surrounding user devices.

So, in layman’s terms, it means that the hub (console/Parent device) and your own handheld will pick up all the related Project Café devices around you. This combined with Bluetooth support and the specific naming of ‘user names’ and ‘game name’ on the display has the aforementioned potential of creating a café style gaming environment.

With the games “MarioKart-2,” “F-Zero,” and “Golf” explicitly named in ‘Figure 7’ of the patent PDF, we might be seeing a large multiplayer push with this device. Racing games like F-Zero and Mario Kart 2 and whatever “Golf” might be really support the idea of a multiplayer focus. Keeping the café idea in mind, I don’t see it being big on the regular online multiplayer that we’ve come to love with Xbox Live, PSN, and Steam (as well as many others). The patent specifically names the use of local device detection, and I feel that is going to be the driving force behind this entire device. As far as online multiplayer in the traditional sense, the patent makes no effort to reference any strives towards connecting the devices to a massive online structure.

Nintendo has only made hesitant pushes towards online multiplayer with the horrible friend codes, not to mention forcing games to have their own complicated systems, as was the case with the recent release of Golden Eye.

On the patent we see a few names credited: Shoya Tanaka credited in Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire for the Nintendo 64, Masato Kuwahara lead of the Nintendo DSi hardware project, and Teruyuki Yoshioka, credited as a supporting programmer in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen. With many strong names on the development pseudo-roster, it’s somewhat promising for whatever this device might turn out to be.

Keeping my wild speculation moving, when the Wii was released we all remember Nintendo speaking upon the idea that they heavily value the personable part of gaming. This has been, for all intents and purposes, entirely successful. We see Wii’s in many households these days and it has become essentially a household name as recognizable as any other piece of technology. If the same idea is expanded on a bit more, we might have something truly interesting on our hands.

I personally like the potential that this device brings. I’m sure I’m very wrong in certain aspects, but it’s fun to speculate on the idea of a device like this. We won’t know anything for sure until E3 in June.

Let us know in the comments what you think the patents hint at.