New Metal Gear Pops Up in Retail Database

This is a 7-Eleven Grilled Chicken Pasta Salad:

It's 298 yen and 437 calories (an average of 1.47 calories per yen).

When picking it up from my local 7-Eleven (one of the five) earlier today, I had no idea that there was some major drama taking place on the 7-Eleven e-commerce site.

Two listings appeared at the site today. See if you can spot the surprise:

The listing to the left promotes the upcoming issue of Gemaga, which hits news stands on May 30. As you can see, the magazine is 257 x 210 mm and costs about $10.

More importantly, the contents section lists, in addition to the usual Dorimaga bonuses like a DVD, a sticker, and a poster (it is 10 big ones, after all!), "Idol Master DS."

Yes, it appears that those rumors of a DS installment of Idol Master may come out to be true. I believe some patent registrations a while back listed "Dearly Stars," "Dressing Sweet," and "Dream Symphony" installments in the series, which would match up nicely with a set of DS SKUs (like the recent three-SKU PSP release).

An Idol Master sequel was actually announced on Saturday at the Nagoya installment of the Idol Master 4th Anniversary Party Special Dream Tours music tour. Producer Yozo Sakagami said that work on the game had only started a couple of days prior.

However, Sakagami also revealed that another major Idol Master announcement, separate from that sequel, was set to be made at the Tokyo installment of the concert. This was scheduled for the 30th, the release date of Gemaga.

There is the possibility that the concert will get cancelled like its Osaka counterpart. Whatever the case, I'll be checking Gemaga on the 30th! (Although I won't buy it -- 10 bucks for a magazine!).

The listing to the right is probably of greater interest to English-speaking audiences. The listing is for the upcoming issue of Famitsu PSP+PS3, which is due out also on May 30. The content of the magazine is listed as "New Metal Gear."

It's pretty obvious from the Kojima Productions teaser site that a new Metal Gear game is going to be announced as early as Friday. The only question was the platform. This retail listing would suggest either PS3 or PSP.

Famitsu Xbox 360 is also due out on the 30th, but its 7-Eleven listing only lists Bionic Commando and a Death Smiles poster.