Lantis, the music label subsidiary of the Bandai NAMCO Group company Bandai Visual, has announced on Friday that it will sell anime songs in North America via Apple’s iTunes Store starting this summer. The first release will be from JAM Project, followed by additional songs every two to three weeks. Lantis will offer songs from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Lucky Star, and other anime by Aya Hirano, Ali Project and other artists. The online North American initiative already has a MySpace webpage for promotion.

Geneon Entertainment had begun distributing anime songs on the iTunes Store in 22 countries in North America, Europe, and the Pacific Ocean region in January.

Source: ANN

According to the April 3 edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun paper, the entertainment conglomerate Bandai NAMCO Holdings is aiming to distribute its franchise of Gundam science-fiction anime series in 10 languages worldwide within this year. It plans to release the programs in Japanese, English, German, French, and other languages through the Internet.

Source: ANN

Namco Bandai Holdings has announced plans to restructure its subsidiary companies, including the Bandai Visual company. Bandai Visual’s three content division production departments and its business strategy division’s advertising department will be redivided into six new departments: Gundam, high-end, characters, anime, film, and music. The “high-end” department will be tasked with projects targeted to hardcore collectors and consumers of Bandai Visual products. The formation of the “Gundam” department marks the first time Bandai has established a separate office concentrating just on its flagship property. Gundam merchandise continue to generate nearly as much sales revenue as Bandai’s next three most successful franchises combined.

Source: Anime News Network

Looks like Banpresto’s famous arcade game with its impressive looking capsule cabinet Kidou Senshi Gundam: Senjo no Kizuna (aka Mobile Suit Gundam: The Bonds of War) is coming to the PSP indeed and it will be called Kidou Senshi Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna Portable according to Japanese video game retailer GAME STAR.

PSP gamers obviously won’t enjoys the full P.O.D. (Panoramic Optical Display) experience, where players sit in a pseudo cockpit with 180 degree screen, but Bandai Namco seems to have made enough changes to make their latest Gundam port to the PSP sounds exciting. The 8 Vs 8 team battle on the arcade is being scaled down to 4 Vs 4 on the PSP, and fans will be happy to know that it supports the Game Sharing function, which means only one copy of the UMD is needed for multiplayer. Those with no friends were also taken care of with the new Mission Mode.

Players were assured that this is more than just straight port as it take advantage of PSP’s hardware capabilities. Controls are simplified to speed-up the gameplays and changes are also made for better camera viewpoint. The game will take care of the beginners with its tutorial missions while experience players can check out the higher difficulty missions.

I already saw a lot of buzz for the game in the forums and this looks like something that can outperform Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam, another arcade port from Bandai Namco that has sold more than 330,000 copies so far in Japan. Now will there be a special edition PSP for this too and how it will looks like? The game is schedule for release in Japan on March 26.

Source: GAME STAR

Bandai Namco did a live demo of Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam vs. Gundam at TGS 2008 with Toru Furuya, voice actor behind the various works of the Gundam series, showing off his skills to the crowd. The special edition PSP was also shown. More pictures at Dengeki Online.

Fans of the original Dynasty Warriors: Gundam are going to love this. It’s confirmed that Namco Bandai and Koei will bring the sequel to this popular game to the following consoles in 2009:

• Xbox 360
• PS3
• PS2

Visit Namco Bandai’s official site for more information.