The Louvre’s Nintendo 3DS audio guide service is ending after 13 years
The Paris museum says ‘a new system’ is taking its place
The Louvre Museum in Paris is ending its long-running 3DS audio guide service.
Originally launched back in Spring 2012, the service allows visitors to pay €6 to hire a Nintendo 3DS handheld during their visit.
While exploring the museum, the bespoke app on the 3DS shows visitors a map and uses geolocation tracking to help them navigate the museum’s numerous halls.
It also provides information on each piece in the gallery in the form of more than 30 hours of audio commentaries, images and 3D models.
Later this year the app, which was developed by Nintendo and spearheaded by Shigeru Miyamoto, will no longer be made available to visitors.
“The New Nintendo 3DS console audio guides will go out of operation in September 2025, to be replaced by a new system,” a statement on the official Musée du Louvre website says (via Nintendo Everything).
It’s not clear whether this new system will be another collaboration with Nintendo – perhaps using Switch Lite handhelds instead – or something different entirely. Neither the Louvre nor Nintendo has announced anything.
In November 2013, Nintendo released a standalone version of the software on the 3DS eShop. The software, named Nintendo 3DS Guide: Louvre, allowed players to explore the gallery and its works from home if they weren’t able to visit the real thing in Paris.
Nintendo was so proud of its association with the Louvre that it released a Nintendo Direct presentation focused solely on the software, with Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata exploring the museum itself.
The company also posted a lengthy Iwata Asks discussion with Miyamoto, in which it was revealed that Miyamoto wanted to add extra animations – to give the Venus de Milo arms, for example, or have a soldier statue pull out a sword – but the Louvre wasn’t keen on the idea.
