TechCrunch points to a newly published patent filed by Nintendo that shows the company is interested in bringing Game Boy titles to mobile devices through emulation technology. Many emulators exist online to mimic old consoles and allow gamers to play back catalogs of games converted to ROM files on Macs and PCs, and Nintendo could possibly do the same to officially bring titles to mobile devices without much heavy lifting in terms of rewriting the games:
A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY.RTM., GAME BOY COLOR.RTM. and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE.RTM. on a low-capability target platform (e.g., a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone) uses a number of features and optimizations to provide high quality graphics and sound that nearly duplicates the game playing experience on the native platform. Some exemplary features include use of bit BLITing, graphics character reformatting, modeling of a native platform liquid crystal display controller using a sequential state machine, and selective skipping of frame display updates if the game play falls behind what would occur on the native platform.
A number of Game Boy emulator apps have unofficially arrived for iOS devices in the past, but Apple doesn’t allow game emulators, which are quite the grey area, in the App Store. Several have snuck past app reviewers disguised as other apps and other solutions exist outside the App Store. Things are different on Android, however, where emulators for Game Boy and other gaming consoles are available to download on Google Play.
So far Nintendo has been one of the big holdouts in the gaming world when it comes to bringing popular titles to the App Store and iOS devices. It has continued to keep its first-party games for its own platforms, where it already emulates its back catalog of popular games from older consoles, but hasn’t shown much interest in embracing iOS or Android.
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GBA4iOS developer @RileyTestut is probably right when he says, “I don’t think Nintendo patenting GBA emulation is a sign that they’re going to do it themselves; they’d just use it to shut down emulators.”
Curse you Nintendo! Why must you get my hopes up for an iOS port of Pokemon Silver that we all know is never going to happen?!
No, it absolutely doesn’t hint that they’re making an official one.
To get into the mobile gaming business, while fashionable, would be suicidal for Nintendo. They would lose SO much money from the change.
O.k O.k, we can agree or disagree, on whether Nintendo will do it, but we can all agree that it’s still speculation and it’s always interesting to see the reaction a move would make. Clearly, there are plenty of people who would love this option. However, “…would lose (emphasis) SO much money..” and “…suicidal…” I don’t know what bubble you live in, but you’d be wrong.
Take a look at the current market, if you as a consumer are interested in purchasing and playing older titles legitimately and legally, you have a couple of options.
1. You own a current console by Nintendo and you can still access there e-Market, to which you have access to the Virtual Console. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_U_%28PAL_region%29 A fairly. limited selection, but some none the less.
2. Pre-owned older hardware. Almost unlimited selection. Quite a popular option, particularly for obtaining very popular unavailable games.
Option 1, Nintendo makes some money off the sales. Option 2, Nintendo makes nothing on anything pre-owned hardware and software they no longer support.
So to suggest that it would kill Nintendo to produce a product for mobile, with a catalogue of software that they no longer support on there current systems is beyond silly, because they would be making more then what they are earning currently, because they aren’t making anything off most of the pre-owned market. (Unless it’s DS)
I hope they bring games to android and iOS. They are really lagging behind sony and Microsoft. They will go bankrupt if they don’t make games available for mobile phones and tablets.
Nintendo is definitely not going bankrupt anytime soon.
They can either port their titles to iOS or go out of business.