Nintendo's Opera for the DS sings of Mobile Digital TV Card

Nintendo have announced that they will release a fully-functional version of the Opera Web Browser for the Nintendo DS handheld.

They also intend to release a digital television tuner card, which will allow Japanese gamers to tune into terrestrial digital broadcasts that will be part of a new service for mobile users launching in April.

Read more about Nintendo's announcements at a recent Japanese press conference.

Nintendo unveiled the new products at a Japanese press conference. Apparently, the Opera browser will ship on a stardard DS cartridge, and is based on the standard Opera software core: the same as the PC based browser. Nintendo are giving the impression that they have no plans to cripple the product in any way, or prevent access to internet content that hasn't been approved by Nintendo.

The release was announced for Japan only, and will take place in June, but there seems to be no reason why Nintendo would not release this product worldwide as soon as they can localise the software. Naturally, there was no mention of a launch date for the US or EU, and no confirmation that there would even be such a launch. Nevertheless, it seems fair to assume that there will be a launch, possibly around September, and equally possibly combined with another title that will help promote DS web browser features.

The television tuner card looks like it will only be useful in Japan, where the launch of the '1seg' digital video service will be rolled out to mobile users. Any equivalent service in the US or EU would likely have to depend on 3G phone services, and would require quite different hardware and business agreements. Nintendo is unlikely to pursue such a complex path, particularly as it would set it in competition with established phone manufacturers. There's currently no release data for the card, even in Japan, and as stated above, a western release is quite unlikely.