Ignition Entertainment has announced today that The King of Fighters XII is still on track for a 2009 release, a release window they stuck with since they announced the game late last year. Sweetness.

Ignition Entertainment's Florida studio is stepping into the next-gen arena and it has a "ground-breaking FPS" inbound. To make the development process as smooth as possible, they licensed Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 for the effort. More details after the jump.

The creation of games publisher Detn8 Games Ltd. was recently announced, and spearheading this venture are the two video game industry veterans Ellen Fuog and Jeff Hill. What makes this different from other publishing companies? Well, for one thing, the two heads of the company have 52 years of experience between them, thus giving this company an edge.

So who are these two veterans, exactly?

Ellen Fuog has 28 years experience in the video game industry. She founded and served as president of UK-based Ignition Entertainment’s US operation from 2002 until 2006, and was also president (and founder) of AIA USA. On top of that, she also served as the vice president of sales and marketing for Jaleco USA, and the vice president of sales and marketing for Kaneko Entertainment. Before that, she held the vice presidency of sales and marketing for WICO, a joystick and peripheral manufacturer. She also started up her own sales rep company, Ellen Fuog Associates.

Meanwhile, Jeff Hill has been in the video game industry for 23 years. Starting in the video game business as a tester for Mindscape in 1984, he started and operated his own company, Black Sheep, Inc., since 1994. He was also the product development director for Kaneko Entertainment and Jaleco USA.

Detn8 has already acquired an all-platform licensee status with Nintendo and SCEA and is scheduled to publish its first release in June, 2007. We will have to wait and see whether the experience of both owners will be enough to bring this company to greatness.

Ignition Entertainment's schedule for Europe has become public and some interesting details can be taken from it.

Metal Slug Anthology (PSP) - November
Metal Slug Anthology (Wii) - November
Mercury Meltdown (PS2) - November
Mercury Meltdown (Wii) - November
Mercury Meltdown Remix (PS2) - Q4 2006
Mercury Type R (Wii) - Q4 2006
King of Fighters: Maximum Impact 2.5 (360) - Q4 2006

As you can see, Metal Slug Anthology should be seeing a simultaneous release on PSP and Wii. Also, since SNK has been saying they want Metal Slug Anthology on Wii at launch, a European Wii launch in November is likely. This should be welcome news to Europeans who had to wait 4 - 6 months more than North Americans for their DS and PSPs.

Another item of note is how Mercury is coming to Wii. The previously Sony-exclusive game is now also set for the Wii's launch window. There's even a second game lined up for "Q4 2006" which makes no sense because that would be just November or December. Maybe the first is a port of the PS2 game and the second takes advantage of the Wii's controls? King of Fighters will also be seeing release on the Xbox 360 at the end of the year.

This list has not been named "official" just yet, but will likely be announced officially soon.