Last week, Siliconera reported Namco Bandai filed trademarks for The Idol Master and Shiny Festa in Europe. Namco Bandai also registered Shiny Festa and [email protected] (not "The Idol Master") trademarks in the United States.

While Namco Bandai Games America has not announced any plans to localize the idol training simulation, seeing these trademarks pop up is interesting. Since the Shiny Festa titles are rhythm games with the Idolmaster characters perhaps Namco Bandai feels these are easier to market than an idol training sim.