According to Nintendo, the Revolution controller will be a large part of what will distance Revolution from other next-generation consoles, including Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's Playstation 3. Documentation on the US patent website, shows Nintendo's new console will feature gyroscopic, tilt-sensitive technology, an LCD touch screen, and a reduced number of face buttons. The Patent
The patent states that the controller is a "housing held by a player" and "the handheld game device" -- it also goes on to describes key aspects of the controller's functionality.
The controller's gyroscopic ability is the key focus within the patent, describing the function as, "a tilt sensor provided on the housing, a viewpoint coordinates determination mechanism for determining viewpoint coordinates in accordance with an output value of the tilt sensor."
"The game system allows the player to feel as if the three-dimensional game space is tilted in accordance with a tilt of a game device, etc., with a minimal processing burden,"
"The handheld game device includes a rectangular housing. The housing has the liquid crystal display,"
The number of buttons present on the controller are further explained in the patent, "a direction instruction switch [d-pad], a start switch, and a select switch are placed on the left side of the LCD, movement instruction switches (A button) and (B button) are placed on the right side of the LCD, and, if necessary, other movement instruction switches R and L are placed on the right and left ends of the upper side of the housing, respectively."
"The handheld game device includes a control circuit (for example, a CPU chip) having a CPU core," more details include; "An LCD controller, a work RAM, a video RAM, and an interface circuit are connected to the CPU core via a bus (an address bus and a data bus)."
