Palm is planning to unveil a new Plug-in Development Kit (PDK) at next week's Game Developer's Conference that will give developers the tools necessary to create more graphics-intensive games, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The new PDK will also supposedly allow developers to port apps created for other platforms onto webOS with minimal modifications.

If the report pans out, it could be the shot in the arm Palm needs to get smartphones sales back on track. As Palm's Q3 financial guidance points out, sales are falling well short of targets, due in large part to the slow adoption of its new webOS smartphones.

Carrier orders are way down and many are beginning to wonder whether or not the company will be able to survive.

If a new PDK gets developers on board with better games and the ability to easily port their apps onto webOS from more popular platforms such as Apple's iPhone OS, the Palm App Catalog could see a major surge. And the iPhone has proven that a stocked catalog of apps can really drive sales.