On April 8, 2019, the U.S. Patent Office issued U.S. Pat. No. 10,596,456 to Nintendo Co., Ltd. The patent concerns a video game controller featuring “a spherical housing, a joystick, an operation button, a vibrator, and an antenna.” In the following figure, you can see that this design mirrors the iconic form of a Pokéball from the Pokémon franchise; the technology in this patent eventually led to the Switch-compatible Pokéball Plus controller.
It’s interesting to look at the language Nintendo’s patent writers use to describe a Pokéball shape without referring to the video game object in and of itself: “The housing includes a first hemispherical portion and a second hemispherical portion. The joystick is on a boundary between the first hemispherical portion and the second hemispherical portion.” Additionally, one of the innovations included in this controller design is the vibrator that allows the housing to reflect when a player catches a Pokémon in-game: “The vibrator is inside the second hemispherical portion and configured to generate a vibration to vibrate the housing.” This patent language is translated into marketing lingo on the controller’s Nintendo-hosted landing page: “When you catch a Pokémon, not only will Poké Ball Plus light up, but you can actually feel it rumble and hear the Pokémon inside. It feels like you really caught a Pokémon!”
Illustrative Claim:
1. A game controller comprising: a spherical housing including a first hemispherical housing, a second hemispherical housing, and a spherical zone-shaped housing between the first hemispherical housing and the second hemispherical housing;
a joystick positioned at a boundary between the first hemispherical housing and the second hemispherical housing;
an operation button having an operation surface at a zenith portion of the first hemispherical housing; and
an antenna inside the first hemispherical housing, the antenna configured to transmit, to outside, information regarding an operation on the joystick and information regarding an operation on the operation button.
