The Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun (or Nikkei for short) reported in its Wednesday morning edition that Nintendo's investment in Skip, Ltd. has resulted in a new type of game with Giftpia (although oddly, the game's title is never actually mentioned in the article).

According to Nikkei's English website, Giftpia is now set to support multiple players, which was not the case the last time we heard anything about the game. The article goes on to confirm that, like Animal Crossing, Giftpia really has no set goal for players to accomplish, nor does it have an epic quest to complete. It's an open-ended game whose course depends on the player's interactions with other characters.

Nikkei also notes that Skip was the first company created with money from Nintendo's "Fund-Q", and that Nintendo has provided half of Giftpia's 500 million yen (about $4.5 million USD) budget.

Finally, we have to report on a very curious sentence in the Nikkei article:

The game will be marketed for use with Nintendo game consoles from April.

It could simply be an error in translation, but the word "consoles" seems to indicate that Giftpia will either have a GBA version or will feature GameCube-GBA link capability.

Giftpia is scheduled for release in Japan on April 25th. There is currently no North American release date.

The link at the top of the page goes to Nikkei's English website, but you will have to register in order to read the article. Registration is free for two weeks and requires a credit card; you need to cancel the membership within that time if you don't want to be charged.