Nintendo Zone McDonald's and the DS in Japanese classrooms

The Escapist reported that Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo's best-known designer, described a plan to bring DS systems into elementary and junior high classrooms in Japan as a learning tool when the new school year began. He spoke in London, where he was accepting a BAFTA Fellowship. Citing the serious games already available for the handheld, he argued that it belonged next to textbooks and other traditional classroom tools. The coverage described a wider campaign to brand the DS as an educational tool, with a deal already reported to put the consoles in the hands of elementary and middle school students around Japan.

The pitch rested on hardware. The touchscreen, microphone and wireless connection suit a classroom, and the low price makes a large rollout easier. Titles in math, language and reading already existed, and the DS was a familiar sight in Japanese galleries, museums and aquariums.

In 2009 Nintendo and McDonald's Japan introduced a DS download station called Nintendo Zone. The Nintendo Zone McDonald's service let DS owners in the Greater Tokyo Area connect wirelessly to a console in the restaurant and download game demos and coupons. Nintendo had been slowly moving its download stations beyond game retailers and restaurants. In Tokyo, the National Museum of Western Art ran a trial that helped visitors navigate maps on their DS systems.

McDonald's Japan also adopted the handheld to shorten the training of part-time staff. The training game, called eSmart, reportedly cost 200 million yen, about $2.2 million, to produce. Two DS systems were to go into each of the 3,700 Japanese restaurants. The company hoped the familiar Nintendo device would appeal to younger employees and halve training time.

Anime News Network reported on February 3, 2020 that Nintendo had announced the end of the Nintendo Zone and Nintendo 3DS Station services in Japan on February 28. The report does not mention McDonald's. Nintendo's own support page for the DS family records a related closure: the Nintendo DSi Shop stopped selling software on March 31, 2017.

No Nintendo or McDonald's page found for this article describes the classroom rollout or reports on eSmart after 2010, so whether either ran as announced is not established here.