Japanese game maker Nintendo will join forces with camera maker Olympus Optical to develop new games for its next-generation Game Boy Advance handheld console, company sources said on Wednesday.
The sources declined to elaborate, but the Nihon Keizai Shimbun business daily reported that the two firms will create a system allowing people to play games using characters, including those from the popular Pokemon game series, downloaded from electronic data cards. A Nintendo spokesman declined to comment on the Nihon Keizai report, saying the company would showcase software for the new game console at a presentation later on Wednesday.
Game Boy Advance, successor to the world's top-selling Game Boy portable player, is due to hit stores in Japan on March 21. The new console, which uses a 32-bit processor, compared with its predecessor's eight-bit processor, will have better image processing and a larger screen than the original Game Boy.
It also allows up to four machines to be linked together and enables players to connect to the Internet.
Nintendo said last year it planned to sell one million units of the new model by the end of March and aimed to ship 24 million units in the next business year starting in April. The new machine will carry a 9,800 yen ($82.59) price tag on March 21, when more than 20 game titles, including the popular
Mario Kart Advance, will also come out.
