2D is not dead.

XSEED Games – the company that gave North American gamers the superb Retro Game Challenge – has announced that it will no longer be distributing Vanillaware’s upcoming 2D masterpiece Muramasa: The Demon Blade.

The statement runs as follows:

XSEED Games confirms that it is no longer involved with the North American release of Muramasa: The Demon Blade. XSEED Games and Marvelous had previously announced the game as part of the initial line up between the two publishing partners. We firmly believe in the product and will look forward to seeing it release in North America. We enjoy and respect our relationship with Marvelous, and are committed to working together to deliver an amazing line up of games in the US including the highly anticipated Little King's Story, the epic RPG Arc Rise Fantasia and Suda51's intriguing mystery adventure Flower, Sun, Rain.

Why XSEED would choose to drop this of all the titles it’s intending to release is beyond us – the game is looking absolutely fantastic. Perhaps the difficulty of selling ‘hardcore’ games on the Wii has made the publisher think twice? Whatever the reason, we imagine that the game will get snapped up fairly quickly by another company (if that isn't the case already).

Update: Looks like it's been picked up by Ignition. Good job!

[source kotaku.com]