Topic: Nintendo's next target? Edutainment

[Protodude]

I don't know about you, but I loved the educational Mario games from the days of yore, so this comes as great news to me:

After capturing an expanded audience of senior citizens and adults that love Wii Sports you have to wonder who Nintendo plans on targeting next. A patent filed today in the USA shows one scenario. This patent is for a system of games designed for young children, defined by Nintendo as toddlers and pre-kindergartners, and/or people with disabilities. Nintendo plans on capturing this market with a series of easy to control edutainment software that emphasizes skills like number recognition, color identification, reading/writing, and sound recognition.

An animal matching game which teaches children about animals and how to interact with them. Players click on the shadows and try to discern which sound which animal makes.

A number matching game designed to teach kids to count. Mario actually speaks in this game with sound bytes to announce the numbers.

Nintendo also wants to use their system to educate children about daily tasks. The player character, in this case Mario, is on his day off from saving the Mushroom Kingdom in his house doing ordinary tasks. This game acts as a life simulation of sorts where a player helps Mario as he’s waking up to make his bed. Motion control will be used to emulate grabbing the sheet and smoothing wrinkles with a slow horizontal motion. Nintendo emphasizes they want to use familiar characters and specifically mention familiar Nintendo characters, television and/or licensed cartoon characters like Pikachu, Dora the Explorer, and Bob the Builder as examples.

Check out more pictures and description from this zany patent here.

[Acid]

Wario's Wild Waggling Adventures - improves your hand-eye coordination

[Harruhy]

Nintendo also wants to use their system to educate children about daily tasks.

NOW THEY CAN SPEND MORE TIME NOT DOING THEM IN REAL LIFE, BY DOING THEM IN A GAME Caps Lock, cruise control, etc

[Jericho]

Smart move actually. I'm surprised it took them so long to get involved with thing like this.

[STM]

A novel idea, but... wait... hear that?

(rrrrrrruuuuuuummmmmbleeee)

...Gamers. A stampede of them who are extremely angry over Nintendo trying to become more multi-purpose.

[Satoryu]

though the life sim deal is interesting, i don't see the edutainment concept working any better than it has in the past. edutainment games have always been yucky.