Nintendo DSi gets Facebook Connect

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Is the beginning of the end of the closed platform?

In all the hype of E3, I missed the announcement that Nintendo will be implementing Facebook Connect into the DSi this summer. Microsoft has announced the same for Xbox Live.

The initial Nintendo offering is incredibly uninspiring: users will be able to take photos with the DSi camera and upload them to Facebook. But iPhone developers have already shown how a Facebook integration can drive usage and purchases: Playfish’s Who’s Got the Biggest Brain, for example, will tell all of your Facebook friends when you have beaten their high score on the iPhone version – they can then play it either on the web or on the iPhone themselves, which is a powerful viral marketing tool.

So it perhaps won’t be long before developers use Facebook Connect to build high score tables, buddy lists etc on the DS. Which will be a very effective form of viral marketing.

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