.hack headed to America?

   A series of posts on Working Designs' message board by a supposed employee of Babbage's reveals the retail chain's release dates for the rest of the year for all the major game platforms. Among other preliminary release dates for numerous titles, the PlayStation 2 release list has an entry for .hack (although without the "dot"), to be released by Bandai on October 2 of this year.

   While this is no doubt a surprising move by Bandai (if true), it must be noted that retail chains such as Babbage's are notorious for putting arbitrary release dates on games that haven't been announced yet. This, coupled with the fact that October is a long way off leaves the possibility for an American release of .hack to be canceled.