I always love it when there's some big financial or corporate news story in the gaming world, as that means the following morning's Nikkei will assuredly have a story about games, something that always perks me up.

Strangely, the Koei Tecmo merger wasn't top story in the paper's Wednesday morning edition (that honor went to a tieup between Google and DoCoMo).

On page 11, right next to a report on orders for new ship construction being down 80% from last year (wow... 80%!), comes a small article about the merger headlined "Koei and Tecmo to combine operations in April of next year."

There isn't really anything new in the article, although there is a blurb about Koei's Kenji Matsuhara telling a Nikkei reporter "We must show sufficient effect of the merger in a few years."

If I'd been that Nikkei reporter, I'd have asked Matsuhara about Project Progressive.

The article also says that Tecmo's new CEO starting January 26 will be Kazuyoshi Sakaguchi, a Nara native who entered the Tecmo group as president of Tecmo Wave in 2006. This probably isn't an exclusive Nikkei revelation, but I don't recall reading about it yesterday.