Nintendo talks past successes and future plans for DS

Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata has talked about DS, Nintendo's future plans for its games and the possibility of non-gaming services being made available to download to DS from public wi-fi hot spots.

On the subject of these public wi-fi services in an interview with Gamespot, Iwata said: "One of the lifestyle proposals we'd like to put into effect in the first half of this year is an experiment aimed at getting people to use their DSs in public spaces as part of a larger effort to make the DS a more helpful tool for people in their everyday lives.

"It's a portable, single-architecture platform that can receive anything given a wi-fi hot spot with over 20 million units in use in Japan and about the same amount in the US and Europe. I really think the idea of making it a gaming machine that's also useful in your daily life is a good one, and possible. We'll be keeping an eye on the experiment's results while hopefully increasing the number of places you can use your DS in progressive steps."

Like PSP's satellite navigation add-on and its new Skype capabilities, DS has also already had uses found for it in everyday life – language translation software is available for it and in Japan the console can be used to give information during museum tours. Meanwhile, a recent test in the US enabled users at a baseball game watch the game on their DS, as well as order food and view statistics.

This isn't the first we've heard that Nintendo will be supporting its console in such ways, but it's interesting that this year could see the beginning of such a trial.

In the interview, Iwata also speaks about Nintendo's original idea to do something different with both Wii and DS.

"We knew that if games appealed to fewer people, the future was going to be bleak. And with video games being demonised by the public, it was hard to see how games could flourish in all that. So we knew we had to change it... Hearing stories about customers who seemed like they'd never touch a game scouring store shelves for a copy of Brain Age is what encouraged us."

The hardcore should rest easy, though. Iwata followed this up by saying that Nintendo would still continue to support more experienced gamers by giving them games such as Zelda, although he thinks the benefit of pick-up-and-play titles is they allow experienced gamers to play with newcomers – something the CEO claims was missing from the market before.

So the future of DS is looking bright for both the casual gaming public and the die-hard Nintendo supporters. Exactly what we'll be able to download to our DS that's useful remains to be seen. Maps? Money off coupons for Co-op? We hope (and suspect) Nintendo has something a bit more exciting up its sleeve.