Seattle Mariners fans experience the Nintendo Fan Network
Monday, July 9th, 2007 at 8:39am by Jack
First, Seattle Mariners fans get access to some Mariners-branded Nintendo DS’s. Now we find out they’re ordering food and drinks, watching live television feeds of the game, and accessing stats . Even if you’re not a baseball fan, this kind of geeky Nintendo-related news is pretty incredible.
The innovative program is called the Nintendo Fan Network. For a fee ($5 for one game or $30 for 10 games), the network uploads a program onto the user’s DS Lite and allows fans to order food and drinks, watch the live television feed of the game, access stats and scores and play trivia, all from the comfort of their seat — whether it’s a premium seat behind home plate or in the top row of the stadium.
This is but one of the many applications we can expect to see from Nintendo and partner companies from here on out, especially as the meteoric success of the DS continues unabated. Besides playing games, what woudl you like your DS to do?
[Thanks, Blake!]
July 9th, 2007 at 9:38 am
id like to order food in a restaraunt. walk in, upload the menu, send off my order.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:38 am
$5?
Eeesh… Should be free since it would encourage the concession shopping and possibly spur a few Mariners themed DS sales.
I was hoping to go sit down in the GameOn sports bar under Fenway when they started to offer this in Boston. Bummer!
July 9th, 2007 at 10:09 am
A lot of wireless networks started out as pay services. Then customer demand drove the price to 0. Hopefully, the same happens with these ballpark networks. Maybe they can run tiny thumbnail sized ads in the DS top screen while you order fries in the bottom one.
July 9th, 2007 at 11:28 am
If Nintendo promotes this kind of use nation-wide (in all major stadiums), the DS will become the de-facto sports gadget to bring along at a game!
I’d like to see this kind of thing pushed, but for free, on other public venues like movie theaters (how about a DS demo of the game based on the movie you are about to watch?), and all other sports events, of course… The Olympics would be NICE!
July 9th, 2007 at 11:49 am
$5 if you don’t use the concession stand, or it’s free if you buy a bag of peanuts.
July 10th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Havent you already covered this?
July 10th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I know I’m late to the party, but…. I’d love to know what technology they’re using for streaming video and what its quality is, since the DS isn’t remotely up to the task of handling, say, YouTube. Some streaming version of the On2 DS video SDK? Bastardized Moonshell DPG?
I look forward to this leaking to the net and being hacked to stream video off of our home servers, since there’s no DS video-over-wifi homebrew out there at present that I know of.