Tecmo unveiling mystery title March 24

Since it spurned Square Enix's advances to merge with Koei, Tecmo has largely stayed out of the limelight. No longer. This evening, the Japanese publisher announced that it is working on a new game for unnamed platforms--a game it is set to announce at an event in two weeks.

In a brief invite, Tecmo promised that the game in question would be "the greatest _____ game ever" when it is revealed on March 24, during the 2009 Game Developers Conference. (Blank space in the original.) Though the statement implies a new installment in an existing series, the publisher gave no other clues about the game, other than to say that its "producer/director" would be on hand to answer questions at the announcement event.

What could the game in question be? The venue for Tecmo's announcement provides a clue, since it will be held at the soon-to-be-shuttered San Francisco PlayStation Store--right across the street from the Moscone Center, site of GDC 2009. Using a Sony-owned, platform-dedicated location to announce an Xbox 360 or Wii game is highly unlikely, which means the game in question is almost certainly headed to one of Sony's three platforms.

Given declining sales of the last-generation PlayStation 2, the top suspects for the new Tecmo game's platform are the PSP and the PlayStation 3. The latter looks more likely, since it already saw the successful launch of Ninja Gaiden Sigma, the 2007 installment in Tecmo's popular--and notoriously difficult--fantasy action franchise. Other possible series include Fatal Frame, Monster Rancher, Rygar, Tecmo Bowl, and Dead or Alive--which the publisher confirmed was getting a sequel last June following producer Tomonobu Itagaki's acrimonious departure from the company.