Nintendo, the world's biggest maker of handheld games consoles, announced yesterday it would enable wi-fi wireless internet access on all its machines and offer the service free on its latest Nintendo DS handheld.

In a speech to the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco, Saturo Iwata, Nintendo's president, also gave details of a next-generation console that would compete with the forthcoming Microsoft Xbox 2 and Sony PlayStation 3.