It talks! DS Cooking Navi.

I’m excited about Nintendo’s new cooking tuition program recently released in Japan for DS. The official homepage (part of the Touch Generations website) has quite a lot of information. I’m not sure if it’s called “It talks! DS Cooking Navi.”, but I’ll refer to it as such because it is prominent on top of the homepage.

It seems that Saturo Iwata has really re-focussed Nintendo’s direction with the Touch Generations series of games and the emphasis on expanding the market (to non-gamers) and improving the user interface. The game uses the touch screen to browse available recipes, and to tick off ingredients as they are collected. Then the DS can be put down in the kitchen and spoken to (using a simple “okay” to proceed to the next instruction) since the cook’s hands will be busy!

The online advertising for the Touch Generations games has involved showing people playing the game. When I first saw this on the Brain Training homepage, I immediately thought it was a brilliant approach to communicate the concept and to show various people’s reactions. For “It talks! DS Cooking Navi.”, the video page highlights the many different people who may want to use the software. I found the top left video (the thumbnail image is an image of a man in a brown apron) is quite endearing. A man (who clearly hasn’t spent much time in the kitchen) cooks for his wife and two young daughters. The family sits down to pick out a recipe, and proceed to gently cheer him on as he cooks for them.