| Sky Render said: The DS has reportedly been seen being used for non-gaming purposes in Japan (I seem to recall reading that one museum had acquired them as tour guidance devices). And apparently some schools there are also buying them for educational purposes. So the DS seeing a larger-than-usual sales count in Japan is not, actually, all that surprising in context. |
Like you said, some museums and schools in Japan are using them as tour/learning devices, and Nintendo uses DS's at their baseball stadium (the Mariners I believe) to give the fans in the stadium real-time stats and such, of the game they are watching and other games as well (scores and such). I also heard that DisneyLand (or World...) was looking into using DS's to give visitors a interactive map, that provides line times, offline rides, and the likes.
I think it would be really neat to be able to use DS's in school. Hopefully when the US politicians get their heads out of their rears and start fixing No Child Left Behind, they'll actually smarten up and perhaps look at using them in school. I'm sure they could use that English Training game to help kids with English. And isn't there a Math Training too?
I think if the DS could hit it off as a non-gaming device in America as much as it has in Japan, it could easily pass the PS2 in sales. It'll be interesting to see if Nintendo trys to do this or not, though it seems like it's already happening with the likes of the baseball stat program thing, and the DisneyWorld/Land interactive map.
That and it could really use a price drop.
