Lots of people in here showing a frankly stunning lack of knowledge about IP law. Anyone calling this a copyright issue or saying that "___ did it first" needs to do a bit of reading up.
Patents aren't copyrights. They have nothing to do with copyrights. The only thing they share in common is that they are both forms of IP protection. Patents deal with mechanical and scientific innovations; copyrights deal with artistic and creative expressions. Something that can be copyrighted almost by definition cannot be patented and vice versa.
Also, unlike copyrights, patents don't really care "who did it first". The owner of the patent is whoever applied for it and got it accepted first, even if other people were doing it previous. That Nintendo was not the first one to come up with the summoning mechanic is completely immaterial.
For those wondering how such a generic mechanic qualifies for a patent... well, it probably doesn't. Or shouldn't, at least. But the standards of the USPTO (which is the body that approves patents) for approving patents slipped a long time ago from "Is this a new, useful, and innovative idea or technology with potential commercial applications?" to "Did the patent applicant pay the appropriate fees?". There are entire websites dedicated to dumb and frivolous patents that have been approved, up to and including the idea of a combover (yes, the USPTO literally approved a patent for a combover in 1977 - check out Patent US4022227A for more details).
Finally, as some people in this topic have already pointed out, the odds this holds up in court are almost nil and I suspect Nintendo knows that. It is possible that they are doing this as some form of lawfare against competitors, but it's also just as possible they're doing this as a "defensive" move to patent something so no one else can do it ("You can't sue us, we hold the patent for this"). Is this going to "topple the gaming industry"? Absolutely not. I strongly suspect absolutely nothing will come of this, because if Nintendo ever tried to enforce this patent, they would almost certainly lose their court case (this patent fails a couple of basic tests for patent protection - patents must cover an idea that is new and non-obvious; summoning mechanics are demonstrably not new and the idea that they are non-obvious is very debatable).
Nobodys going to read this. Threads like this exist for two purposes:
1: People getting their dopamine hits from their drive-by Lol fuck Nintendo posts 2: If anyone tries to actually reasonably talk about the issue, dropping back in for a further dopamine hit with a snide remark about the Nintendo Defense Force.
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Currently playing: Tales of Graces f (Switch) Never befriend a man in sandals and always measure twice, cut once.