A Nintendo of America software engineer recently took to Twitter to blab about a previously unheard of project being worked upon by the Big N. From his tweets it seems like Nintendo is working on its own branded Android tablet which will focus upon educational games and activities. Nintendo will make use of its valuable IP by including famous video game characters in the tablet targetted edutainment apps.
Nintendo focussed website NintendoEverything saved all of Nintendo of America software engineer, Nando Monterazo’s tweets with great foresight - as they have since all been removed and all we can see on his Twitter page now are less enlightening microblogging gems such as “We are all addicted to coffee!!! ^_^”. Monterazo's series of tweets concerning Nintendo’s Android slab were as follows:
- Experimenting with a tablet of Nintendo, the system is based on android, fully modified and unified as a database of the tablet.
- At the moment just testing communication environment of educational games that will be shared between the kids using the tablet!
- Nintendo is testing only the "Android" but in fact she wants a system written in C/C++ in a Unix environment for the system single tablet!
- Many people will be wondering if games "Nes", "SNES" or "Game Boy" the tablet will not have these games, educational games only!
- It is, a tablet with educational games for children with Nintendo characters….
- …now the tablet is primarily focused for schools!!
VentureBeat followed up the news by contacting Nintendo, however a representative of the company would not comment on speculation or confirm the employment status of Nando Monterazo.
There are lots of educational titles already on Nintendo DS systems
Nintendo has a lot of very valuable gaming intellectual property and it is reported that company investors want Big N to make more of it out of the confines of Nintendo hardware. However this looks like a baby-steps experiment by utilising Nintendo games characters in a different way in a limited test market – the educational market. Sticking its toe in the water this way will also help to prevent cannibalising sales of its portable DS series of consoles.
