Today at the SEGA event in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, we had a litte chat with Atari. Atari representatives were at the event because Atari distributes the SEGA titles in the Benelux. Unfortunately, Atari brought us some bad news.

Some of you may have already heard of these Cube cancellations. Today Atari confirmed the rumours...

Mission Impossible: Operation Surma, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and Driver 3 will not be released for the Nintendo GameCube.

Fortunately, Atari said we will probably see the sequel to Dragonball Z: Budokai on the Nintendo GameCube. And the following titles are also still on for a release on the GameCube: XGRA, The Powerpuff Girls, Beyblade, Dexter's Laboratory, Carmen San Diego, Kero Kero King, and Digimon Rumble Arena 2.

More coverage of Tuesday's SEGA event will be posted on Cube-Europe throughout the week.

UPDATED: 25/09/03

We just got word from Atari that the company made a mistake when it told us that Mission Impossible: Operation Surma got cancelled for the GameCube. In other words, the game is still on track for the GameCube. Rejoice!

Update 25/09/2003

Atari sent us an official statement regarding the cancellations. The company says the following...

"We need to correct the information on MI and confirm that it is being developed for GC. With regard to T3 and Driver 3, we made the change due to development time constraints. With T3, the game needs to launch with the DVD and there simply wasn't time to develop the game for the platform. With Driver 3, our primary goal is to ensure that this game is the highest quality possible and therefore, we are focusing our efforts on our lead SKUs (PS2 and Xbox)."

Apparently the reason for the Terminator game cancellation was not because of GameCube sales numbers. However the second reason is a bit doubtfull, as Atari says the PS2 will be able to run a higher-quality version of Driver 3. Hmm...

We will keep you updated.