Namco says We Kill Katamari

Namco has put paid to speculation about a new Katamari Damacy game by, er, dissolving the development team and declaring that it won't be making any more.

Last week the official Japanese website said it was about to be yanked down. Given the timing, which seemed to line up nicely with previous Katamari-related activity, there was speculation that Namco was about to announce another game.

Instead, it's clawed the site down and replaced it with a holding page, partially translated by Gamasutra, which says that "Doctor Katamari" (believed to be series creator Keita Takahashi) has moved on to a new, non-Katamari project and that the rest of the team has been split up and is working on other things too.

In a double blow for fans, all the old website content - including a vast range of gorgeous desktop wallpaper images and screensavers - has been dismantled too, leaving us with little to look forward to other than the May 5th European release of PSP title Me & My Katamari which, er, we didn't really think was all that brilliant anyway.

On the one hand then, boohoo! On the other, there's something oddly refreshing about it. Sure, nobody knows where Katamari might have gone under the auspices of its dedicated minders, but on the other hand here's a developer and a publisher saying "right, that's enough of that" instead of just making 58 of them in a row. Will you be mourning Katamari Damacy 2006: Road to Our Beautiful Chin?

Perhaps it's best to simply go and wave goodbye. What do you reckon?