When Japanese mobile developer, Colopl, announced a new White Cat Project game (also known as Shiro Neko Project) for the Switch last week during its 4th anniversary live stream, there was widespread confusion as to how it even got the go-ahead.
At the start of this year in January, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against this exact developer, asking for $40 million in damages over five potential patent infringements. According to an official statement from Nintendo, the company's software sales and lawsuit are completely separate matters, so this announcement won't be affected by any legal proceedings.
White Cat Project was originally released in the west as Rune Story but was shut down in 2016. It was an action-RPG for mobile devices featuring cute 3D characters where you attacked and moved by tapping and swiping the screen. If Nintendo were to win the lawsuit, the ramifications could be potentially huge for the Japanese mobile market.
The Switch version of White Cat Project is expected to arrive in 2020. The official announcement teaser is below.
[source siliconera.com, via gonintendo.com]
Comments 17
Thought it was some Xenoblade rip-off at first because of the pic. lol
I can see you guys really did take the feedback seriously. I don't remember seeing this many articles on a weekend before. Keep up the great work!
The brand name Colopl already sounds like someone slapped the keyboard on their face and gave whatever came out the greenlight.
See, this sort of thing kind of scares me away from mobile development. If I were to bring, say, a first person game to mobile, I'd like to try out some new things for the touch controls, but then part of me's terrified that someone will come at me claiming I infringed on their patent I didn't even know about.
Anyways, I really don't understand why on Earth Nintendo is suing this company. Like, they used an on-screen control stick... Like thousands of other mobile games do. Perhaps there are other patent issues that were more serious that haven't been made public, and they just threw the on-screen sick patent in there too, but I really have no idea.
This is a weird, weird relationship
@Joeynator3000
If you think giant whale with landmass on it is unique to Xenoblade then boy do you have some research to do.
I have no idea what it was, but the graphics looked pretty great!
Didnt really give us much information there, but will keep an eye
@RyanSilberman
Not weird at all! Samsung and Apple, for example, also sue each other left and right, but at the same time they also benefit from each other.
2020? I'll forget this lawsuit by then XD
I had a wave of future shock there...2020....that’s miles away....oh hang on...
It's hard to judge this article without any knowledge of the lawsuit case.
Can't see why it should be a problem. Unless you really want games companies to be all emotional and carry grudges against each other for some reason. They have a disagreement about one thing, but agree on something unrelated.
That reminds me of Lynn and the Spirits of Inao.
@Kevember Also noticed no click-bait article titles I now enjoy coming to nintendolife a bit more and might be more inclined to stay in the long run.
Nintendo: "we are suing you for possible patent violations on Mobile!"
Nintendo: "we're letting you bring your game to the switch!"
pretty much what @RyanSilberman said.
@SethNintendo Exactky my thought but now I have no intention to google this to get clarification. NL could do it right to begin with.
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