Kyoto Museum Already Using Nintendo's New Content Service

Update on Nintendo's latest attempts at expanding the DS audience.

2009-04-28 20:52 / Anoop Gantayat / Comments

Just a slight update on my story from earlier about Nintendo's latest DS expansion. I managed to get my hands on today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun (thanks, Mr. Park!), and there are indeed a few more details in there.

It appears that the Museum of Kyoto (in Kyoto) already has an application that uses the new system on test. Starting today (4/28), visitors to the museum can have voiced explanations for exhibits sent to their DS for free. These explanations are provided by celebrities.

I didn't see anything about this on the museum official site, so presumably Nintendo is keeping hush hush about this for now.

Outside of schools and museums, the paper also reports that ideas are in place for using the service in nursing homes as a method for managing staff schedules, a staff contact lists and as a staff message board.

In the article, a cartoon shows a possible classroom application for the service. A teacher is shown sitting at his desk at the front of a classroom. He has a computer. The students have individual DS units. The teacher sends out questions that he crafts on the PC. The students fill in answers on their DS. The teacher can see the number of correct and incorrect responses.

As with the online version, the print article doesn't clarify the exact nature of what Nintendo is providing through this new service. I'm going to speculate that it's a PC-based tool for simple content creation that can exchange data with DS units.

We'll have to wait for clarification from Nintendo.