Nintendo Invades Bookstores

January 2, 2009

So I was wandering through a large UK bookstore chain earlier this week when I came across this display (apologies for the quality this was from my phone):

A Nintendo DS display case.  Selling Nintendo’s in a bookstore?  The games on offer here are mainly brain training, classic games, and cooking games.  No Zelda, Mario, or anything else of the sort, just educational entertainment and non-games.  I did notice how the 100 Classic Book Collection title was absent.

Reading books is an activity widely accepted to help further one’s intelligence while playing video games has generally been regarded as a method to waste one’s life away.  To me, this is a huge step forward for video games to become part of mainstream culture and general lifestyle.

Well done Nintendo, you are helping make books an obsolete media and having the bookstores realize it and cash in on the Nintendo Money Train.  Now can we get a game that is not a platformer, RPG, or strategy game for my DS?  And I don’t want any more brain training, cook books, or anything of that sort.

By Keith Carter | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Read or Play?

December 11, 2008

On the 26th of December you will now be able to use your DS as a book with ‘100 Classic Book Collection’.  Titles such as Gulliver’s Travel, Around the World in Eighty Days, and more will make use of the DS dual screens to present text to you like pages in a book.  No real graphical adventures here, just your imagination.  All for GBP 20.

Some neat futures that will make this better than a normal book are:

  • Electronic book marking (if this wasn’t there then you shouldn’t buy it).
  • The ability to download additional titles to the DS.
  • Mood suggestions provides a list of titles to match your mood.

I think this will make the DS a little more engaging to everyone.  Parents can feel their kids get more out of their video games by offering reading.  For one I, pretending to be an adult, don’t have to carry a book and my DS on the train for entertainment anymore.  As a bonus this title is cheaper than buying each of the actual books individually.

Full press release is beyond the Jump

Hit the jump for more »

By Keith Carter | Tagged , | Comments (9)