Having released the deluxe 300-page hardcover Rifts Ultimate Edition earlier this month (see 'Retailers Get ONe LImited Ultimate Rifts in Six-Pack'), Palladium Games has an ambitious release schedule for its Rifts Adventures and Sourcebooks with at least three black-and-white softcovers slated for the remainder of 2005 and one per month planned for 2006.  The first in the series of 96-160 page trade paperbacks, Rifts Merc Adventures Sourcebook ($10.95), will be out in September, followed by Adventures in Dinosaur Swamp ($17.95) in October, and Rifts Arzno ($17.95) in November.  In addition to the once a month schedule of trade paperbacks in 2006 Palladium will continue to publish its magazine The Rifter on a quarterly schedule.

Palladium's Kevin Siembieda told ICv2 that while hardcore fans will gladly pay for a sturdy, deluxe hardcover core rulebook, they want lower cost follow-up products.  Siembieda also told ICv2 that he thought Rifts had a core of about 20,000 current players and that he had sold more than 230,000 copies of various Rifts volumes since the science fiction RPG debuted at GenCon in 1990.