Pantechnicon
04-27-2009, 02:11 PM
(Sorry if this info is already all known. I searched to see if this topic had been discussed before, but couldn’t find anything related . However, if this needs to be merged somewhere else please do so.)
Yesterday I took my son to Toys R Us to get a hold of the exclusive Secret Key download for the DS Pokemon Platinum game and received my first look into how these downloads are distributed inside whichever stores to which they are exclusive.
When we went into the store, Alex fired up his DS but wasn’t getting a wireless signal, so we moved over to the game section of the store and still no luck. We asked the girl behind the counter if the download was still available and she said, “Oh, yes. Sorry about that…” and proceeded to unlock a game cabinet, where on the bottom shelf out of plain view was a model I DS. She turned the DS on and Alex was then able to get his download.
I, for one, found this quite intriguing. I had no idea what sort of hardware was used for these types of distributions. I imagined some sort of exotic Nintendo-made server device broadcasting a wireless signal inside a store and content coming off of some nifty little CD. It turns out the whole distribution apparatus is nothing more than a single DS running on AC power with a special cart.
Did someone say “special cart”? That’s where it gets interesting. I asked the TRU girl about it and she said these carts are tightly controlled by Nintendo; that they’re only supposed to be in use during the periods of distribution for whatever exclusive is being offered; that they’re supposed to be sent back to Nintendo as soon as the promotion is over and that Nintendo fines individual stores something like $150 per day for failure to send back the carts immediately.
(If I would have thought about it, I’d have liked to fire up Pictochat on my son’s DS and see what sort of identification this “server” DS would have been broadcasting. Would it be something conventional like “TRU” or a store number or something a little more interesting?)
It occurred to me later that, from a collector standpoint, these distribution carts could become to the DS what the NWC’s are to the NES. The current consensus seems to be that once DLC (in general) is gone, then it’s gone forever. But at least in the case of the DS there’s a potential opportunity to preserve some of this material, assuming the carts ever find their way back to the public (and I’m not suggesting anyone who currently works with or knows these carts does anything to risk their jobs). It would be a funny site at, say, CGE2020, to see someone with a few of these carts in hand distributing long-abandoned DLC via his/her own DS.
Well, that was what I learned on Sunday about how DS DLC is distributed via retail outlets. I’d love to hear from anyone who has any more info on the subject. I’m also curious if any of these carts have yet found their way out of the Nintendo vault either physically or by ROM dumps?
Yesterday I took my son to Toys R Us to get a hold of the exclusive Secret Key download for the DS Pokemon Platinum game and received my first look into how these downloads are distributed inside whichever stores to which they are exclusive.
When we went into the store, Alex fired up his DS but wasn’t getting a wireless signal, so we moved over to the game section of the store and still no luck. We asked the girl behind the counter if the download was still available and she said, “Oh, yes. Sorry about that…” and proceeded to unlock a game cabinet, where on the bottom shelf out of plain view was a model I DS. She turned the DS on and Alex was then able to get his download.
I, for one, found this quite intriguing. I had no idea what sort of hardware was used for these types of distributions. I imagined some sort of exotic Nintendo-made server device broadcasting a wireless signal inside a store and content coming off of some nifty little CD. It turns out the whole distribution apparatus is nothing more than a single DS running on AC power with a special cart.
Did someone say “special cart”? That’s where it gets interesting. I asked the TRU girl about it and she said these carts are tightly controlled by Nintendo; that they’re only supposed to be in use during the periods of distribution for whatever exclusive is being offered; that they’re supposed to be sent back to Nintendo as soon as the promotion is over and that Nintendo fines individual stores something like $150 per day for failure to send back the carts immediately.
(If I would have thought about it, I’d have liked to fire up Pictochat on my son’s DS and see what sort of identification this “server” DS would have been broadcasting. Would it be something conventional like “TRU” or a store number or something a little more interesting?)
It occurred to me later that, from a collector standpoint, these distribution carts could become to the DS what the NWC’s are to the NES. The current consensus seems to be that once DLC (in general) is gone, then it’s gone forever. But at least in the case of the DS there’s a potential opportunity to preserve some of this material, assuming the carts ever find their way back to the public (and I’m not suggesting anyone who currently works with or knows these carts does anything to risk their jobs). It would be a funny site at, say, CGE2020, to see someone with a few of these carts in hand distributing long-abandoned DLC via his/her own DS.
Well, that was what I learned on Sunday about how DS DLC is distributed via retail outlets. I’d love to hear from anyone who has any more info on the subject. I’m also curious if any of these carts have yet found their way out of the Nintendo vault either physically or by ROM dumps?