A new form of entertainment is coming to gamers in glasses-free 3D: music videos.
Nintendo will be adding an entire slate of 3D music videos to the system’s Nintendo Video app, which is a free download.
Among the artists available or soon to be available in the new service are The Shins, B.O.B., OK Go, Death Cab for Cutie, and I Fight Dragons.
The 3DS is the first Nintendo product since the company woke up to the realities of modern game platforms. Nintendo built the device from day one with the vision that consumers would not simply be popping in a game, playing it for a couple hours at a time, and be content.
Instead, Nintendo realized that gamers want to be able to download games directly from the device – and not just game, but also apps and multimedia services.
The Wii doesn’t share that same vision. Even though the industry was on the cusp of the digital revolution, Nintendo played it safe with its current home console.
The Wii was designed with the novel idea of being able to download classic Nintendo games. Nintendo thought that’s all it would need in terms of Internet connectivity. It truly didn’t believe that online gaming and digital distribution would be important for this console cycle. How wrong it was.
Now, Nintendo engineers have needed to work with the limited infrastructure they have to allow for things like Netflix streaming and downloadable content add-ons to games, something that seems like a necessary part of gaming today but something that was definitely not part of the Wii’s design.
The Wii U will be launching later this year, and there are still questions about whether or not Nintendo will “get it” this time around. The company has been very quiet with regard to the upcoming console’s Internet connectivity options.
