 In this video we're going to be talking about Nintendo's next hardware and some actual patents that appear to be at least filed from Nintendo surrounding this hardware. I also want to dive into this idea coming from a Switch developer that it seems like backwards compatibility may not be a thing with this next system and whether or not they're right or wrong based on just my own research into this topic anyways. I obviously am not a Switch developer so I'm not one to question somebody who has Switch development experience but I do wonder if the history of Nintendo is a bit more telling on a yet to be released platform. So first off let's get into the stuff that's actually filed brand new patents and this first one we're going to be talking about was published today it was filed back on my birthday actually July 5th here 2022 and it's about a communication system this is basically a bunch of verbal garbage to talk about can be multiple devices communicating together and you can see a little bit about how this works you got to search for a connectable peripheral terminal so this is suggesting that whatever is connecting to something else is a peripheral connection process how all that work does it work does it not work is there a problem etc etc when we get down here and what we see are a range of devices here that are quite interesting so we see obviously a tablet a phone and another phone so you have app A at B and app C and all of them are pairing with this centralized device now this doesn't explain what this centralized device is of course this could be something new something coming down the pipeline is currently there's not really a way to communicate our phones with our switches so it would seem like this would be a new device but what's interesting in looking at all of this because you got all the pairing information here and whatever Nintendo wants to pair this stuff for is we actually have a former patent that was published not too long ago that kind of explains what this would be for now we see PCs involved in well and this just furthers my thought process on what this could be so you have an app connected to the PC plus to the centralized device why would that be something that Nintendo cares about well I have an idea I think Nintendo has told us if we connect the dots and that is because of this patent right here which was filed on July 20th and published back on November 17th and this goes over what's this oh look tablets phones VR connecting to a device I think that this patent here dealing with connecting devices to a centralized device and possibly even including a PC in the mix is about this VR application that seems to be about connecting to a brand new system from Nintendo right here marked as number 60 so I think that this is just Nintendo having multiple patents flying around around this same technology and you might go well why would PC matter maybe you can hook up additional VR headsets that are wired to a PC so not just the wireless headset that we see here that's working natively with the switch this is actually a controller I say switch whatever the next system is and so I think what we're seeing is just Nintendo patenting all these ideas around VR and how everything connects together this is like patenting the idea of what the VR headsets do and then this would just be patenting how everything connects together how a PC if you want to have extra VR headsets or something that need extra processing could also be put in so if you have existing VR headsets it's possible that that could be what Nintendo is looking at maybe hey we might have our own stuff but we want to make this an all-encompassing thing and maybe include you know competing VR devices through a PC I mean this is just obviously speculation I'm not saying that this is for sure 100% a fact but what is a fact of course is that these patents exist Nintendo filed them for a reason it may never come out this whole thing could have just been a one-off idea but we're continuing to see more patents published and these patents were filed around the same time this one was filed obviously back on July 5th and then this one was filed back on July 20th so there is a lot of reasons for me to think that these are probably related in some form now that being said we also got an update from a switch developer known as modern vintage gamer you guys have probably heard of him he's on the hate podcast he appears on spawncast as well he's got a YouTube channel where he does some cool stuff and on the latest episode of the Nate the hate podcast he and well he and Nate basically said the following about the next switch hardware based on a user question then had a dollar donation from Liam Warner writes if a new smash or ultimate port would require renegotiation of third-party contracts what's stopping Nintendo from just releasing updates for this game on the next gen assuming it's back compat I don't like Lee but is it the same game so they could it technically that would be a workaround they yeah they would just have to give whatever the contract stipulated in terms of royalties per copy sold so that would be a workaround to keep this game going forever a lot of assumptions at the next the next Nintendo hardware is gonna be backward compatible by the way have some thoughts about that but we'll we'll talk about that when the time comes yes so this is interesting to me because we don't know exactly what modern vintage gamer means when he says a lot of assumptions about the next Nintendo hardware backwards compatible and I have some thoughts on that outside of the fact that I bought a year ago modern vintage gamer noted how hard it may be to have backwards compatibility with new hardware just due to how the GPU and other things process things and going with more modern nodes and architectures it's not one-to-one this has actually been a concern other people have brought up over the years been talking about transitioning to a next system I also will note however that Nvidia has a really good track record at making their hardware backwards compatible with software and I'll also note that Nintendo has a tendency to do backwards compatibility of one generation when possible now impossible times were obviously going from like the Nintendo entertainment system to the super Nintendo really hard to do backwards compatibility there because the cartridges were so vastly different design same with the n64 same with the GameCube but think about this when we got to the Wii we had full backwards compatibility with the GameCube the Wii U even though it wasn't the best solution technically had full backwards compatibility with the Wii obviously know the 3DS and backwards compatibility with the DS the DS backwards compatibility with the Game Boy Advance Game Boy Advance backwards compatibility with the Game Boy Color Game Boy Color backwards compatibility with the Game Boy so Nintendo does have a long history of a generation worth of backups obviously now we're in the situation where digital sales are a big thing and we don't know as of yet Nintendo offering a digital solution but we're just kind of hopeful that Nintendo is not going to just abandon you know an entire six seven year run of Switch hardware and there's some reasons to maybe want backwards compatibility and some of that does have to do with the initial question about Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and working around some of the licensing with that because the licensing exists for Switch it doesn't exist for new hardware but if they can extend that licensing just have it be backwards compatible with slight upgrades that could be a solution I also think if they want to work out the licensing agreements they could I don't foresee a lot of the companies that have characters in Smash Ultimate being like oh no now you can't have those characters on the next platform yeah I just don't think they're going to be that big of a stickler about it as long as they get their cut of whatever the sales are but hey look I'm just looking at this from I guess more of an objective maybe a more hopeful viewpoint that I don't think we're going to need to worry about the Switch hardware and its backwards compatibility as much as MVG might be suggesting and I do think one natural thing here for Nintendo wanting to have you know new features on the new system because you know Nintendo doesn't like to release just iterative platforms it has to be something new could be this idea of optional VR so again the new patents from Nintendo those are things that are real they exist we could speculate on those obviously we have this MVG stuff coming out where he seems to be hinting again that he doesn't think backwards compatibility is happening it's also possible that backwards compatibility isn't a thing in the dev kit because it could just be something that's just natively supported and not something that developers even need to worry about I'm just saying possibly we don't actually know that being said I am the tenderable chance from Nintendo Prime I want to get your thoughts on this down in the comments below what are you thinking what do you think these patents mean what are you thinking about what modern vintage gamer said and what are you thinking about this next system in general when are we getting it what's it gonna be what features do you want to see what improvements do you want to see over switch beyond just bumping the hardware specs that's the conversation I think we should start shifting to how could Nintendo switch online improve I think there's a lot of conversations that aren't happening yet around the new possible Nintendo system that we need to start having so you guys let me know down in the comments below and I'll catch you in the next video