Looking up those patents, the first alludes to a system where a player aims and fires an “item” toward a character in a field, and in doing so triggers combat, and then dives into extraordinary intricacies about switching between modes within this. The second is very similar, but seems more directly focused on tweaking previous patents to including being able to capture Pokémon in the wild, rather than only during battle. The third, rather wildly, seems to be trying to claim a modification to the invention of riding creatures in an open world and being able to transition between them easily.

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[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml -1 points 19 hours ago

Then not even sell the damn things

Sorta true. Nintendo has been monetizing emulation for years, ever since they started releasing "virtual console" games on the Wii web shop.

The Switch now offers NES/SNES games as a benefit of their online service, and has released a handful of games as standalone releases which are literally just nicely-packaged emulators (Mario Sunshine and Galaxy 1/2 bundle for example)

If emulation and "piracy" of old consoles is allowed, then Nintendo fears it won't be able to charge as much to repackage identical technology as full-price game releases.