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One Piece Kaizoku Musou Game Gets Half-Million Pre-Orders

The game publisher Bandai Namco Games announced at a press event on Monday that the PlayStation 3 game One Piece Kaizoku Musou has received more than 500,000 pre-orders.

At the same conference, Shin Unozawa, the head of Namco Bandai Games, confirmed that Tales of Xillia and Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs. each sold over a half million copies on the PlayStation 3 console, so "I feel that we've settled on it as our preferred hardware system." The singer Serina of the AKB48 spinoff idol group SDN48 also cosplayed as the One Piece anime and manga character Boa Hancock for the event.

Bandai Namco Games and Koei Tecmo Games' development studio Omega-Force are working on this "dream collaboration" that combines the pirate story of One Piece with Koei Tecmo's Musou action game franchise.

As the first One Piece game for the PlayStation 3, the title will ship on March 1 for 8,190 yen (about US$105). There is also a 12,390-yen (US$159) Treasure Box edition with a book of designs and visual art, 15 pin badges, and an original soundtrack CD. Still another edition will bundle a gold-colored PlayStation 3 console, with the One Piece lead character Luffy in white on the top, for 38,170 yen (US$489).

"Kaizoku" means "pirates" in Japanese, and Koei Tecmo's Musou action game franchise has traditionally been retitled with "Warriors" in English. Namco Bandai Games filed the game trademark "Pirate Warriors" in the United States this month after the company registered the same trademark in the European Union in December.

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Sources: Game Watch, Famitsu via My Game News Flash

Images via Comic Natalie