" Just the other day, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported the possibility of a merger between Namco and Sega. Today, although the report seems unlikely, it appears Namco has officially confirmed the merger. Much as reported in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the deal will see the two companies merging during 2004, and will be used to strengthen both company’s presence. Its expected that the company will have sales around 350 billion yen a year ($3 billion USD).
Of course, how this will effect the Sega/Sammy deal has yet-to-be revealed. Nevertheless, we’ll keep you posted."

http://www.activexbox.com/

The full story is supposed to be on Namco' s own main Japanese website, but of course I can' t read Japanese. Here' s the url anyway.

http://www.namco.co.jp/home/pr/20030417/

And since this is from their Japanese website, they' re could be something horribly mistranslated and this merge may not be be confirmed at all. But it' s still interesting.

Yes this is indeed big news, now I just wanna see some Tekken Vs VF action.

I still think MS is going to try to get Sega. When it comes to money MS is the king.