Word on the street is that Electronic Arts would like Nintendo to make EA’s Origin its digital distribution service with the release of the
A hook up between the two companies would help Nintendo get a much deeper and more aggressive foothold in the western market and allow the company to court more hardcore players to its platform. As for EA, the deal would help it in a race to combat and compete with Valve and Steam.
Idle chit-chat also seems to suggest that Valve may (or could be) pitching a similar deal to Nintendo, as well, but confirmation of this seem quite sketchy, at best. There is no denying, however, that should Origin become the digital distribution provider for the Wii U, it could be a game changer going forward, making Origin a much bigger player against Steam.
We will have to see where this leads, as deep throats say that no decision has been made yet; however, Nintendo has said that they want to completely overhaul and make over their online presence and online abilities with the Wii U to compete directly with Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, and you will need solid digital distribution abilities to do that. Time is short, however, and its decision not to build this itself but use either Origin or Steam could prove quite interesting.