Gundam coming to PS3 this year

Fans of big stompy robots rejoice - Namco Bandai has confirmed that its new Mobile Suit Gundam game on the PlayStation 3 will be appearing before Christmas in the United States and Japan.

Using the increasingly vague "launch period" definition, that probably means that the game can probably claim to be a PS3 launch title - and it's even got an official subtitle now. Originally shown off at E3 under the simple working title of Mobile Suit Gundam, it's now called Mobile Suit Gundam: Crossfire.

Based on the incredibly long-running Gundam franchise - which sits firmly at the more "realistic" and military-focused end of the often utterly insane Japanese giant robot spectrum - the game harks back to the original Gundam continuity, and allows the player to choose between campaigns for the Federation and Zeon sides, piloting famous mobile suits from the various different Gundam series along the way.

Aside from that, details are thin on the ground - notably, there's no mention of any kind of online functionality or multiplayer - and the E3 demo didn't really tell us much either. We walked around a barren desert landscape for a bit in a Federation Gundam and shot a lot of enemy mobile suits in the face, but the most we can say based on that is that you can shoot off individual limbs from enemy mechs, and that all the metal is very shiny.

And, of course, there's no word on whether we'll see the game in Europe on the same timescale, or indeed at all - but previous console launches have shown that Sony likes publishers to roll as much of their portfolio as possible out in every territory around launch, to bolster the range of titles available, so there's every chance that we could see this in the PS3 launch period on this side of the world too.