Cube Pokemon is Ruby/Sapphire add-on

Nintendo UK has confirmed Japanese news reports that Pokemon's GameCube debut will require either of the two matching GBA titles to play, and cost less to buy than either of them.

The reports initially appeared in the Japanese Nikkei newspaper, and although low on details did specify that the game would only work with the Cube hooked up to a GBA running a copy of Pokemon Ruby or Pokemon Sapphire.

Nintendo UK told C&VG today that they have made "no specific announcement regarding plans for Europe." The publisher seems to have been caught off-guard by the Nikkei revelation.

The hushed up Cube Pokemon is clearly a very secret project - absent even from Nintendo's optimistic Japanese release list for 2003 - but the news is curious rather than exciting. What sort of content we can expect is very much up for debate, although it now seems likely the game will draw on Ruby and Sapphire's respective Pokemon data.

However, the news surely casts doubt over a rumoured Pokemon online title, as the prohibitive costs of all the tools involved (Cube, GBA, link cable, Ruby or Sapphire, Cube Pokemon title) would surely be too much of a stumbling block for an online title.