Powerups in the Subway

In a Toronto Subway, there's an interactive billboard advertising the Lord of the Rings musical (oookay) that lets you download a ringtone if you point your bluetooth-enabled phone at a sweetspot on the board.

This piece of news is kinda off topic, more about mobile marketing/advertising but I couldn't help but feel it's very game-like or has the potential to be used for gaming purposes.

This billboard is probably blind to who you are, dispensing it's tones to anyone it wants. However, it won't be too long before location based mobile services take advantage of these random powerup locations. We'll all be wireless soon anyways, so it won't be so much "point your phone here" as "stand in this corner of the street" to pick up something of value.

Think about walking into a Best Buy, standing in front of the games section while you browse the menu (no more product on shelves) and receiving your content on the spot. (Retail packaging will go away but some people still like to shop)

Finally, this kind of stuff is made for a game application. Just daydreaming, I've come up with almost a dozen games you could play in the real-world using this type of technology. Surprisingly, only one of them is an scavenger, collect clues type too.

via Adrants here.

[Edit: Just noticed that Interstractive, an online strategy blog, posted about a McDonalds campaign that uses mobile technology for a scavenger type game.]