In 2010, Beauty Clock Co. released an app called Beauty Clock Portable for the PSP. The app featured pictures of women telling the time using sign boards, and would change to a different picture for every minute.
Originally released as an iPhone app, Beauty Clock Portable was released for 300 yen on the Japanese PlayStation Store. This week, it’s headed to the Nintendo 3DS via the Nintendo eShop in Japan as a free app under its original title, which is simply Beauty Clock.
Beauty Clock will feature 360 different pictures of women holding hand-drawn signboards telling the time, and will include other upgrades that were part of Beauty Clock Portable as well, such as timer and alarm features.
Wondering why Beauty Clock is free when Beauty Clock Portable wasn’t? For starters, Portable had a whopping 1,440 pictures, while the 3DS Beauty Clock only has 360. Beauty Clock Portable also featured paid expansion packs such as a “Kyoto Pack,” which also cost 300 yen apiece. We’ll probably see similar paid DLC for Beauty Clock as well, once Beauty Clock Co. have given 3DS users a taste of the app.
Food for thought:
Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, recently revealed that Nintendo were allowing developers to release free-to-play games with micro-transaction payments on the eShop, similar to the way a lot of mobile phone games make their money. Beauty Clock 3D could be the earliest example of this payment structure on the 3DS.
