New battle system reportedly being

worked on:

Square Enix Designer Working On New Battle System News | Video Game Event News, Latest Trailers | GameTrailers.com

Shrugs...we'll see what game it goes with.

:)

I could care less about anyone at Square working on a new type of battle system since it happens for just about any game ever released. I am confused by filing for a patent for it. Seriously? Patenting a battle system? Was this patent filed in the US, because that's about the only place I can think of that would let an application so stupid actually fly.

Fans of FFXII often said that was their main reason for liking the game.

Shrugs.:roll2

Battle system is 6 or 7 down the list of things I look for in a game.

I presume Square got patents in Japan and in other countries as well.
It is relatively easy to get a patent here in the US.

I presume this is for Agito as it is allegedly for a hand held. With FFXIII out the door we can presume it's full speed ahead for Agito and Versus.

:)

Did anyone follow the link in that article to:
Is This One Of Tetsuya Nomura’s Unannounced Games? // Siliconera

I love those diagarams.

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Now for the serious part.

After thinking about it for a little while, patenting game innovations is not as stupid an idea as it may seem (I deffer judgement on if the idea in question is of sufficient innovation to warrant a patent). One of the primary functions of patents is to increase the reward/risk ratio in developing a new idea. If you labor long and hard over something new, and the competition immediately copies said idea, then your potential risk has grown, and reward lessened. This makes developing new ideas far more risky and the market stagnate.

By being able to patent ideas an developer who takes the time and energy to develop something truly new and amazing may be rewarded by having exclusive rights to use this idea for the duration of the patent. This could in theory make developers shift from a shotgun like approach, to properly developing an IP so it is solid for a whole generation.

There are of course many downsides to patents of such sorts as well, such as decreased flow of ideas across the industry. I just wanted to point out that there are upsides to issues like this, and it is not as cut and dried as it may seem.

My point about the battle system was that simply filing for a patent for a battle system isn't overly interesting since it's preatty much understood that people at any game company work on this sort of stuff with every single title they make.

My problem with the patent is that simply being able to patent a battle system seems silly to me, at least off hand. I suppose one could argue that it's no different than patenting a board game (at least I think you can patent a game), it still seems silly since you could then have companies getting into disputes with one another over whether a genuinely great game system was infringed on. Just seems to me like an attempt to grab some royalties if someone makes a game with a battle system that gets close enough to a likely vague patent.

Either way, at the end of the day the market tends to reward the originator a little better than the copy cat unless the copy cat does things significantly better, so patents on game designs strike me as a little redundant.

I guess my point was that if these things were patentable then maybe companies would put the effort into developing innovations that wouldn't be good just for one breakthrough game, but several games.

reporting of the news. Or what they consider news.;)

I assume Square has other projects in the works they're keeping secret from us fans.

I tend to think those are FF related though. Like I have said in another discussion Square seems to have abandoned other games/series they own the rights to. Some fans feels it's justified for them to have done so. Others disagree.

I happen to disagree.

Whether this new system is for Agito or something else who knows ?

Square does own Eidos now as well so we'll have to see what they do with that company's products, if anything.

:)