Nintendo announced its big tie-up with Hatena today for the Moving Notebook user generated content service. The "user generated content" term was the catch phrase being thrown out throughout the day. Nintendo even mentioned it in their press release on the tie-up.

While the notion of user generated content may seem a bit strange from the protective Nintendo, this isn't the first time it has used the term. Before Moving Notebook was this:

That's a commercial for Band Bros. DX. It makes note of the fact that downloadable songs for the game went from 200 at the June 26 launch to 3,317 by November 1.

[end_preview /]

Most of those additional songs were submitted by players who used the game's composition tools to input notes and variations on professional songs. Nintendo takes care of the resulting licensing fees from JASRAC.

While this is a limited form of user generated content -- users are not permitted to submit original songs -- Nintendo prez Satoru Iwata did point to it as evidence that Nintendo is supporting the trend.

Moving Notebook goes a lot further with the idea of user generated content. As you can see by some of the sample animations that are now at the Ugomemo Hatena website, the program offers users quite a bit of expressive power. Combine that with a full-fledged sharing site, and the only thing keeping the service from exploding will be the relatively low adoption rate of the DSi.