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by Debora Pape
13 years in service: the Louvre retires its Nintendo 3DS media guide
5.5.2025
Translation: machine translated
The Nintendo 3DS actually deserves a medal for its many years of employees at the famous Louvre art museum. In a few months' time, it will be sidelined.
If you visit the Louvre in Paris, you can currently still be guided through the famous art museum by a Nintendo 3DS. The handheld has been in use there as a multimedia guide since spring 2012. But that will soon come to an end. A notice has appeared on the museum website that the ageing devices are to be replaced by a new «system» from September 2025.
Long service in the museum
The small console was released in 2011 and sold more than 75 million units by the end of production in 2020. This means that the 3DS is still in museum use several years after the official end of sales.
The 3DS is the first console that can display 3D content without you having to wear glasses. I don't know whether the 3D effect is also switched on in the Louvre - but it would make sense: the software contains numerous three-dimensional representations of the works of art.
The switch to a more modern system makes sense: the two screens of the 3DS are only three and 3.5 inches in size and offer a resolution of 320 × 240 pixels or 400 × 240 pixels (per eye). This makes the displays appear angular and small.
The Nintendo 3DS as a competent multimedia guide
Thanks to the two screens, the 3DS is very suitable for presenting different content at the same time, such as images or facts and an interactive map. Using geolocation tracking, the device displays your position in the museum on the map. The upper screen displays 3D content, while the lower screen has a touch function.
The museum app was also available in Nintendo's online shop until 2023. It contains more than 600 photos of artworks, more than 400 photos from the exhibition rooms and more than 30 hours of audio material in nine languages.
In 2013, high-ranking Nintendo executives Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto introduced the 3DS as a multimedia guide during a tour of the museum in an engaging way.
Header image: Nintendo
Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
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