Japan Banning Wireless In-Flight Gaming

You'll have to trust me what this news story says: Japan is set to ban wireless gaming on airplanes. Both the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS have features that let you play against other players with the same hardware, wirelessly. That's set to change, as fears over how the low-power signals could interfere with plane electronics.

What's actually surprising about this is that the technology hasn't long since been banned already: American airlines already tell fliers that all wireless technologies are verboten during flight. Perhaps Japanese airplanes had a loophole for gaming? And of course, Wi-Fi is allowed on many flights, such as Lufthansa's jets with in-flight wireless access.

Japanese fliers will still be able to use their gaming devices, but wireless features will have to be turned off. Flight attendants will be permitted to check the devices to see if that is indeed the case. Keep an eye on them so they don't run down your battery playing your game of Super Mario DS.

Is this the start of an even bigger backlash against wireless online? The topic tends to get wrapped up in the discussion about cell phones on airplanes (about which most people have voiced themselves clearly), but wireless data technologies are something that have been part of many airplanes for years, without incident. Conspiracy theories welcome.