Column: 'Release This!, Week Ending March 18, 2006'

Gamasutra's round-up of worldwide video game releases, "Release This!", takes a look at every game title we know to be shipping to stores this week, in an exclusively compiled list. Vivendi dominates the young people's market this week, with Ice Age 2: The Meltdown - a tie-in with the CGI-animated movie coming out from Fox later this month - arriving simultaneously across most of the major platforms in the United States. Other big-name releases in the U.S. this week include Konami's Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence, Sony Computer Entertainment's Daxter, and Capcom's Mega Man: Powered Up. In outside regions, Europe catches up with some big properties, like Sonic Riders and Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams (along with a seemingly region-exclusive PS2 commercial tie-in for Smarties candy). And in Japan, Square-Enix releases Final Fantasy XII while most other publishers watch from a distance. You can read the full Gamasutra column, covering the worldwide spectrum of game releases for the week ending March 18, 2006 (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).