As pointed out by our sister-site MacRumors and discovered by Patently Apple, Apple has registered a patent application for a new style of home button that pops up and doubles as a joystick. Now, before getting too excited about this, keep in mind Apple (and all other tech companies) are basically filing patents every day for all sorts of crazy things. It seems like a good 99% of these patent applications never amount to anything, but they’re still fun to look at.
So the idea here is that when you want to play a game or do something that uses the magical joystick home button, you’d pop it up and then you’d be able to ever to slightly tilt it around to control whatever it is you’re hoping to control.
There’s a couple problems hampering the real-world feasibility of all this. First off, the home button has already been tasked with Touch ID functionality and with the introduction of Apple Pay, I don’t really see them changing that around. Could this home button joystick also still do Touch ID? I mean, maybe, but it seems like a lot going on for one button. Additionally, it seems like there could be some valid durability concerns particularly when you think how tiny this joystick would have to be compared to how rough gamers can be on their devices.
But, hey, like I mentioned before, these Apple patents are always fun to look at. With what you’ve got to do to protect IP in this country you basically just have to rapid-fire patent applications for even the craziest things you come up with so you can claim ownership over them in the future. Whether Apple actually has plans for this or if someone just said “Hey that’s not a bad idea, patent it,"… We’ll just have to wait to find out.
"Okay, yes, I would rather have seen a port of the original game, but it's still selling for a high price on its original platform, so I suspect we'll have to wait a while longer before there are even whispers of such things. In the meantime, we've got this, so let's make the best of it."
You anticipated everything I (and likely everyone else) is going to say. Well done!
When FF Record Keeper came out in the Japanese store I tried it, but couldn't really enjoy it because I just don't know very much Japanese. I imagine this one would produce the same results?
I would say the language barrier is even higher here. Sorry!
How does this compare to Terra Battle and its interesting new coop mode?
Nevermind, i just wanted to troll a little while reminding everyone how awesome TB is.
The first BD was excellent so i'd kinda like to try this.
And dear Shaun, "it overstayed its welcome" is the kind of elegant understatement i love reading you so much.
OMG I love The bravery franchise
Bravely Default almost has convinced me to get a 3DS.
This is the game co-developed with Gumi, from Brave Frontier.
No, you're thinking of Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius. This game was co-developed by Appirits, who made Shikihime Zoushi and several Asia-only browser games.
Code XxN7U