So THQ has snagged itself a fancy new deal with Nintendo which allows them to develop games featuring “Nintendo’s intellectual property.” The deal will last until Oct. of 2009, and gives THQ publishing rights within the Western Hemisphere. Nintendo, of course, will maintain all sorts of veto rights. Alex Blonski over at Canada.com’s game news draws comparisons to Nintendo’s deal with Sega allowing the use of Mario characters in the team-up Olympics game we’ve got coming our way soon. Alex also wisely points out that Nintendo has been very wary in the past about sharing character licenses with other developers.

So is this a move towards a wider stance on character license, or are we blowing the news out of proportion? As always, only time will tell — we have no way of knowing exactly what Nintendo is sharing with THQ until further news comes down the pike — but we can certainly speculate. While it certainly is true that Nintendo has been stingy with sharing, I personally tend to view this as a good thing. Nintendo property software traditionally has a very high standard, and you can almost always expect a Nintendo-made title to be a good title. Games starring Mario, Link, Samus, etc, rarely ever disappoint. I can’t imagine Nintendo would make a deal which would result in the weakening of their title franchises, though, so I’ll approach this deal with optimism for now.

[via Canada.com]