The future of Dragon Ball video games is no longer with Atari, as the franchise rights have been picked up by Namco-Bandai, taking effect from January next year.

The new publishing deal will see the existing development teams at Toei Animation and FUNimation, with two Nintendo exclusive titles already announced- ‘Revenge of King Piccolo’ for Wii, and ‘Attack of the Saiyans’ for DS.The split from Atari comes following tensions between the two companies, with an apparent dispute in licensing agreements with FUNimation in 2007.

Namco-Bandai is a massive entertainment powerhouse in Japan, producing cartoon TV shows as well as high-quality video games such as the ‘Tales of’ series of RPG’s. The company is therefore a suitable caretaker for future Dragon Ball games, given their history of managing both cartoon show and video game properties.

The publishing contract extends to 2015, which is a very long time in the world of video games.

Source: Gamespot