Nintendo has been slowly opening to involving smart devices in its strategy, and the company trademarked an interesting picture with the Japan Patent Office.

The picture, that you can see reproduced at the bottom of the post, quite explicitly represent some form of connectivity between a smartphone and a Nintendo 3DS.

Here's a translation of the trademark:

[Trademark ID 2014-36705]

Trademark: [image]

Applicant: Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Filing Date: May 9, 2014

Publishing Date: June 5th, 2014

Class: 9 (home video game machine program, etc.), 38 (providing information and communication by electronic bulletin board), 41 (mobile games)

At the moment the true purpose of the trademark is unclear, but the most probable theory points to an icon to be printed on game boxes and promotional material indicating connectivity features with smart devices.

It's very possible that we might hear something about this on Tuesday during Nintendo's E3 programming.