Among a veritable slew of new release news from Konami today is the first bunch of screens from its just-announced DS virtual pet sim GoPets which is set for release later in 2007.

Yes, yes, yes, we know. It looks and sounds a bit (a lot) like Nintendo’s very own hugely successful Nintendogs games.

However, there is one key difference. Go Pets offers “a unique animal community using the handheld’s wireless connectivity.”

From Konami’s release just in, “GoPets brings together a community of virtual pet owners within which players can create, raise and train a virtual dog or cat and watch as their pet develops its own personality, appearance, traits and hobbies. Players can also take the pet online through Nintendo’s Wi-Fi service to make friends with other pet owners around the world.”

So you can to interact with friends through text chat and also through GoPets’ icon-based ‘IKU’ language – which means that even if you don’t speak the same language as other virtual pet owners you can still chat via emoticons!

GoPets is the outcome of the game-design geniuses at Konami thinking, “how can we combine the runaway success of virtual pet sims on the DS with the runaway success of online social networking?”

Though whether or not it will compete with meeting and chatting and flirting with real-life dog owners in the park remains to be seen.