Koei Co Ltd , a major Japanese game software developer, said on Monday it plans to market a new game using digital video disc-ROM (DVD-ROM) technology for Sony Computer Entertainment’s next-generation game machine by the end of the year.

The stock market gave a warm welcome to Koei’s announcement, pushing its share price sharply higher to 2,790 yen by 0450 GMT, a rise of 390 or 16.25 percent.

The new game, named “Kessen” or “Battle,” will be the first software to use DVD-ROM, which can hold about seven times more information than the
CD-ROM technology used in Koei software designed for the first version of Sony’s PlayStation machine.

DVD-ROM software provides clearer and more powerful visual images than CD-ROM, Koei said in a statement. The first version of the PlayStation, a 32-bit game console, was introduced in December 1994 by Sony Computer Entertainment, the video game unit of Sony Corp .

Koei plans to launch the DVD-ROM game software by the end of the year to coincide with the launch of Sony’s new souped-up game console, the PlayStation 2. The price of the game has yet to be set, but a Koei spokesman said the firm was targetting annual global sales of one million units, its highest target ever.