Nintendo’s Pokémon Company has filed a patent that hints at a new handheld device dedicated to Pokémon-style battles. Although it was filed in March 2014, the patent has only been made known today and refers to a device that uses NFC technology.

The device was reportedly invented by Norio Matsumura, a director who has had a hand in a number of Pokémon games. You can see the concept sketch above, and here’s a description of the device:

An example system includes: a contactless communication unit for performing contactless communication with a data storage medium having a contactless communication function; a data acquiring unit for acquiring data stored in the data storage medium by the contactless communication unit; a display processing unit for displaying at least one content stored in a content storage unit and a content according to data acquired by the data acquiring unit on a display unit as selection objects; a selection accepting unit for accepting selection by a user for a content displayed by the display processing unit; and an information processing unit for performing information processing pertaining to a content, which is an object of selection accepted by the selection accepting unit.

There’s certainly no guarantee that this device will ever see the light of day, but this patent ensures that the idea is legally the property of Nintendo, so we can only hope that it is used to create something new and exciting in the near future.

What do you think of the concept? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.