National Geographic Embarks on Videogames

National Geographic is getting into the videogame business.

Through its for-profit unit, National Geographic Ventures, the nonprofit National Geographic Society has created National Geographic Games.

The division's first game, Herod's Lost Tomb, was developed in-house and is a free download for PC, Mac and the iPhone. After that, NGG is coming out with games for Nintendo's Wii, Sony's PlayStation 3 and handheld devices.

Some will be developed in-house while others will rely on partnerships, such as National Geographic Panda from Namco Bandai and National Geographic: Africa from Sony.

Chris Mate, previously an executive with Take-Two Interactive Software and Bethesda Softworks, was named gm of NGG.

NGG is expected to focus on building games that further its theme of spreading geographic knowledge.