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A pretty big announcement from the Game Developers Conference today: Nintendo announced that a new online service called WiiWare will be available in mid-May. Meant for its Nintendo Wii game console, the big deal is that the service is actually a platform where third-party game developers can build for the game system, according to a Newsweek report.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]Users will be able to download directly to their consoles, and it should make the Wii experience even more expansive and popular. Nintendo was already pretty far ahead of its competition, and as we've seen in both recent trends and the GDC conference this week, game companies are taking concerted efforts to leverage the web and platform operations to become more competitive in the gaming space. So with this move, Nintendo gets to go even further ahead of its big name competition, like Sony and Microsoft.
To make WiiWare more accessible to consumers, Nintendo has indicated plans to roll out different pricing on the games to be sold via WiiWare, and also incorporate the existing Wii Points purchasing system. Interestingly enough, games won't have to be pre-approved before being offered on the WiiWare platform, though they will still need to be rated by the industry-established ratings system.
[img src="" caption="" credit="" alt=""]Given Microsoft's ongoing plans for leveraging its Xbox Live system for the distribution of gaming and other media content, it's not surprising that it's introducing a platform for third-party game development as well. Reported by Venturebeat, Microsoft is hoping to double the Xbox 360 game library by the end of the year.
Aside from the slew of content that will soon be available for consumers that play on Xbox and Wii, I'm curious to see the impact of these new platforms on web-based gaming, and if and when web-based gaming (as we currently understand it) will be integrated into these new platforms on any level.