The Louvre will stop renting out Nintendo 3DS audio guides in September

In a few months, you’ll no longer be able to rent a Nintendo 3DS to guide you around the Louvre and tell you about the pieces exhibited in it. The website Nintendo Everything has spotted a notice in Louvre’s official website, stating that the Nintendo 3DS console audio guides “will go out of operation in September 2025.” It also stated that the 3DS will be replaced by a new system, but the museum has yet to reveal more details about it. Is the Louvre swapping the 3DS for the Switch or a more traditional audioguide device? Guess we’ll find out in a few months.

The Louvre has been offering Nintendo 3DS audio guides since 2012 as a €6 rental. It can tell you about exhibits in English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. It can also tell you about the history of the palace and not just the artworks inside it, as well as give you access to high-resolution images of select artwork so you can zoom in and see the smallest details. But if you’ve ever gotten lost inside big museums, you may perhaps consider its geolocation tracking capability its best feature. The Louvre is massive, and with 782,910 square feet of space to explore, it’s very much possible to lose your way and not find an exit when you need it the most.

Nintendo’s Satoru Iwata and Shigeru Miyamoto demonstrated how the 3DS worked as a Louvre audio guide and location tracker over a decade ago, and you can watch it below.