Koei has announced that the company shipped 50,000 copies of its PlayStation 2 MMORPG Nobunaga's Ambition Online to Japanese retail stores prior to the game's June 12th release. According to the company, the game's operations might write black numbers sooner than originally anticipated. As Koei spent around 800 million yen ($6.79 million US) to develop the title, an estimated 30,000 users subscribing to the game will be enough to make it profitable. Asked about the next generation of hardware, Koei chairwoman Keiko Erikawa gave a similar answer as her colleagues at Square Enix last week, saying that the current specifications were not yet available, and hence her company hasn't started developing software for the next generation of consoles, which are expected to be available by 2005 or 2006.

• Bloomberg Japan