If Microsoft was challenged they would reveal the patents. And any company they approach know which patents MS is asserting.
Do you think MS just walks up to an OEM and says “Pay us or we will sue you because of these magic patents”?
Not they say "We have patents X, Y, Z, that you are infringing on. We can license you Patents X, Y, Z or sue you for using them.
They don’t have to tell the rest of the world that patents X, Y, and Z are the issue, but the OEM’s that signed the deals, and Google know exactly what these patents are.
I think this was a goal for CS:GO, and they backed off. The reason, as I understand it, is that for a PC they can release patches as often as they want, but for PS3 and XBbox they have to have the patches be verified and distributed through the respective app stores. So, since they could not guarantee that a game would be the same on all systems they decided to forgo this.
This is not as much of an issue with portal, as it’s not a super competitive game, but for a shooter where the gun mechanics in a particular build change the entire weapon balance in a game would be a huge problem if the builds were not synced up.
