Nintendo has announced that it has signed a deal with Japanese online firm DigitalArts to provide an optional content filtering system for the
Nintendo DS web browser, in order to prevent minors from accessing mature content.
The service is already being advertised on DigitalArts’ website and will apparently be available from the day of the browser’s release in Japan, on July 24th. The filtering system will work in the same manner as other online content subscription, with a monthly fee of ¥315 ($2.70).
This appears to confirm that the browser itself will have no built-in functionality to prevent access to specific websites or content, a feature that would previously have seemed unthinkable for the normally family-friendly Nintendo.
The Nintendo DS Browser is adapted from the popular Opera Browser, and will be available in two versions, one with an expansion pack which fits into the original Nintendo DS console's Game Boy Advance port, and another other which has a smaller cartridge made for the slimmer DS Lite.
The DS Opera browser has still not yet been announced for release in the West, however, although it is expected to be available this year in North America at least. The lack of information on a Western release makes it impossible to guess whether content filtering will be included by default or only as an external service, as in Japan.
