Disney making Club Penguin DS game that connects to the virtual world

This was a no-brainer once the Walt Disney Company bought Club Penguin last year, but it's still interesting to see it finally happening... Disney Interactive Studios is doing a DS game based on the mega hit virtual world.

It's called "Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force" and it involves penguins on secret agent missions (hey, I don't come up with it). But the really interesting part is that Disney promises the DS game will be able to wirelessly connect to the Club Penguin virtual world so kids can unlock special features, upload coins that they earn, etc. They can also chat with friends on their Disney.com friends list, which is being integrated with Club Penguin, via the new DGamer service.

This is the first step Disney has taken to move Club Penguin beyond the virtual world where it has started into other parts of the company, and also a sign of how Disney's Web properties are being more and more merged into its videogames (as heralded by the merger of those two divisions into Disney Interactive Media Group).

And not too different from competitor Nickelodeon's licensing deal with Capcom to make a "Neopets" DS game, though in that case there isn't any promised connection between the game and the virtual world.