A series of patents filed by Nintendo back in March 2016 could potentially be pointing at the features available in Nintendo's recently announced hybrid console, Nintendo Switch. The company's filings had suggested that the console would switch to cartridges, include detachable controllers and a tablet – all of which ultimately turned out to be true.
The patents suggest that the Switch may include gyroscope, GPS, touchscreen, compass, motion tracking, image recognition and a projector.
The patent document mentions an infrared camera, a light-emitting distance measuring sensor, an infrared emitter and a projector. This cluster is used to, among other things, detect motion, shapes and gestures and project images.
All these features can be creatively incorporated into video-games designed for the Switch. In one example, the patent shows how the device can recognize a player’s hand to play Rock, Paper, Scissors with the device’s cameras. Other examples include moving the hand towards or away from the screen and making use of gestures to simulate the image on the screen, answering math questions by holding up the number of fingers, moving a snake across the screen by moving the hand towards the other side of the screen, projecting an image onto the user's hand, detecting what the user is holding in their hand and playing a baseball game by projecting the ball onto the player's hand to throw and catch the virtual ball.
According to another patent, it is possible that the Switch can have different controller types.
For more info on the Nintendo Switch, check out this article. An exact release date hasn't been confirmed for the console aside from a general release window of March 2017.
