Apple targets Sony, Nintendo

Apple set its sights on Nintendo and Sony on Wednesday when it revealed that it will bring an online gaming service to most of their portable devices, reports Joe.ie.

The service called Game Centre will allow users to keep track of their games, play against friends online, enable competitive matchmaking and earn achievements, much like the Xbox Live service on Microsoft's console.

During his presentation, Steve Jobs name-checked his competitors and claimed that total sales of iOS devices now exceed the combined sales of Nintendo's DS and Sony's PSP and that the iPod touch is now the number one portable games platform.

OnLive, California-based games-on-demand service, says it has begun a beta test to let gamers play over wireless networking connections, writes Venture Beat.

OnLive runs its games in the cloud, using beefy servers with graphics processing capability and compression technology that can send the game data back to the user in real time.

The result is that the server-based game service feels like a user is playing a game that is stored and processed on the user's own computer. The cloud-based service offers benefits such as the ability to play demanding games on low-end hardware and the ability to log into the service from any machine.

iOS users will now have another option for multiplayer gaming, only this time it will be coming from OpenFeint, states Into Mobile.

It will also be available for Android, said to be a great upcoming cross-platform solution, called OpenFeint PlayTime.

PlayTime will bring multiplayer gaming to both platforms, and is said to be able to give the user matchmaking, game servers, and real-time voice chat as well.