July 10^th, 2002 (12:00am) -
Tokyo, July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Tecmo Ltd., maker of the best- selling ``Dead or Alive’’ series of video software, plans to release the latest version of the action game next year.

The new game will be a sequel to ``Dead or Alive 3,’’ the martial arts fighting game released exclusively for Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox game console. Tecmo hasn’t decided which console the sequel will be designed for as it is still in early development, President Junji Nakamura said in an interview.

``Dead or Alive 3’’ is the best-selling Xbox game in Japan and has sold more than 1 million copies worldwide, a level regarded as a blockbuster in the video-game industry. The company supplied ``Dead or Alive 2’’ for Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 2, and switched to Xbox because of that machine’s better graphics.

``It’s too early to say which game console the game will be for,’’ Nakamura said. ``We are an independent game software developer, and we are not committed to one particular game-console maker.’’

Sony’s PlayStation 2 dominates the $20 billion industry with more than 30 million sales. Microsoft and its Xbox are now competing against Nintendo Co.’s GameCube console for bragging rights as the world’s second-largest video-game maker.

Microsoft planned to sell as many as 4 million Xbox consoles worldwide by the end of last month. Nintendo planned to sell 12 million GameCubes in the year ending March.