Bandai Namco Posts $350,000,000 Loss, Will Sack 10%

Hey, why not quit rehashing the Tales series and allow the Xenosaga series to be complete, for real this time?

This is sad, for "NAMCO" is one of my most remembered favorite names as I grew up. I'm hesitant to give any company advice if it lays off it's employees (does the CEO get his huge salary also?) but here goes:

1. For RPGs, look up stuff I said for Final Fantasy issues, a bunch of discussions recently. Of course, a simpler form of "Adventure" falls into the second category...

-but-

2. I'm not into NAMCO so much for RPGs, I like old school arcade games -but- not just retro. I want old school but with better graphics. I liked the old ones, but wished the graphics could be better. Once the graphics got better, they kept trying to expand them so we got horrible 3D stuff and awkward play.

I plead the fifth amendment on what I might or might not have on "Emulators" -BUT- I actually do have a number of PS2 and XBox "Arcade Classics" collections. I DO believe in "Buying what you like" to "Vote with dollars" for it.

What I'm suggesting:

Make a bunch of "NeoRetro" games. These would be very easy to make and have the graphics fantastic, just a matter of making sure they play well. I'd love to expand if anyone's interested.

Sell them for PC (and other media, like phones, ipods, etc) downloads for $5, $10, etc. Make them cheap so more people buy them and just use "Guilt" to discourage piracy.

I'd even LET pirates juggle them, essentially being true "Guerrilla marketing" then have an "Amnesty Gateway" where the user pays them the low price of the game and then downloads the non-cracked version. (overwriting whatever 'extra' the pirate might have put in the game)

We are dealing with a recession market here. People want to "Buy Things" but they think longer and harder for "major purchases" and "Commitments". A large, engrossing RPG is both a major investment in $ (US$60+ new, often higher in Japan) and in time. On the other hand, a fun "Space Zapper", "Super Spy simple mission", "Simple Graphic Adventure game, not fancy" etc. sold for US$5 would be a perfect solution. Buy it at GameStop with a card. Buy it online with PayPal or a credit card. Think small, simple, can be played quickly, interesting enough to play a lot of times, but can be put away or stored for a long time...

But Tales of Graces was really good!! I can't see why it did so bad. It was several times better than over half of all Tales games released on nintendo systems. I guess its the fault of the fall in real gamers using the wii? we need to get some of those older women and little kids to start playing rpgs.

Yeah, well, they deserve it for not releasing either the PS3 or an xbox update of tales with Patty.
They deserve it!

Please stop calling them betas. They're not.

Still, I must agree that their business practices are... bizarre, to put it lightly. Screwing over fans, poor advertising, and releasing endless deluges of spinoffs will lead to consequences very quickly.

Tales of Graces – 189,000 (Wii ’09) is only 10% lower than the average of slightly over 200k units sold per title per console for the past 5 years. This would have been more than compensated by the large sales of Tales of Vesperia – 338,000 (PS3 ’09) which surpassed it's initial sales on the Xbox. The dead weight is from them TRYING new stuff, not their solid franchise.

all i want is my suikoden 6.

I was hoping for Vesperia "Perfect" to be my first purchase. but I guess that's not coming to the states.

This is the best news ever! I hope they learn their lesson and stop messing with fans of games, giving them incomplete games, and then denying them of acquiring the complete versions of said games, I hope they keep losing money until they change their ways of doing business!

The link to "Explaining the losses" leads to a 404...

Either way, I hope they recover; as much as others may thing the Tales series are nothing but repeats - I personally love them.

Tales of Bandai clumsyness - 0 (JAP '10)

I hope all video game companies go out of business. There hasn't been a good RPG since Grandia...Nothing is worthy of collecting anymore. The heart of the gamers have died. Move on.

That's what happens when you fuck over your fans.

I used to be a fucking huge fan of the Tales series, but after what they pulled with Vesperia i'm not going to buy another Tales game in the future.

Tales of "Whatever" which was a good series but not many people would get into it because the lack of marketing it had.

'Tales of Vesperia β'
Cute Sankaku, very cute.

Namco reaps what they sow for their bad buisness practices, they'll get no sympathy from me since they don't even try or actively gloat how they won't export games I like over the states now.

Hmmm Tales sales are pretty consistent anyhow. And that bullshit vesperia beta thing is definitely gonna bite them in the ass...

This better not delay Graces from coming to the state though...

yep, I totally agree with a lot of comments above. If you fuck with your fans, you will eventually fuck urself up and screwed.

They release the same series' to the same, tired audience. Instead of releasing them to America and whatever other countries that actually want them. Therein lies the problem.

They could release hemhem XENOSAGA, as a re-release of the trilogy, and actually attempt to sell it like Final Fantasy

Hah, u deserved it for releasing half-arsed games. Stick to Tekken and be done with it :p

Not even Idolm@ster helped out? (Though I did hear after the initial sales boom for Ryou's penis, Dearly Stars sold poorly due to lack of content... only about 7 playable songs and a severe lack of clothing choices.)

Come on BaNam, we need a new Im@s game with more songs and DLC...

Hmm, so the company loses several billions, and oh we can solve everything by ditching the people that make our product.

Maybe they should ditch all the people from management that lost the billions in the first place :)

Clearly someone in charge, is a total clutz.

That's what happens when you start making fucked up dragon ball games.

Releasing the PS3 in North America and Europe would be a wise move. I mean, it sold more in japan then the 360 version did worldwide. Release it to NA and europe and you could double those sales up there.

Tales of unemployment – 630 (IRL ’10)

Serves them right.

The legend will never die

Nanco is already dead.

Namco deserves it, for being complete assholes for their recent Tales releases.

Well, that's what they get for short-handing the US and other countries of their precious Tales remakes, not to mention the UK ONLY got Xenosaga 2. Their version of part 1 was a 4-hour, horribly spliced movie made up of cutscenes to summarize everything. For shame Bamco, for shame.

With the crappy FF13, Square will be the next to follow.
They should go back to their roots and make again games where pople would kill for getting them

HA! That what you get for not localizing perfect Vesperia you trolling corprait fucks.

Eat shit.

Well, I don't expect betraying the fans' expectations would give them profit. Serves you right, Namco. Good luck in getting your customers back.

should have stopped after Tales of destiny 2. The rest after it fails..

Since they just keep making the same crap over and over again, Namco can expect to keep gaining less and less. Is as simple as that.

The 1st Tales of was enough…

so bandai is the gonzo of gaming. honestly aside from tales, what else do they make? i can't for the life of me think of anything recent that was worth waiting on them.

What about Gundam?

No pirated psp game loss? how about gundam vs gundam next, ikki tousen annd naruto shippuden series?

Ouch......

If you put the whole figure in all numericals, like '32,000,000,000,000' of course it sounds more dramatic than saying '32 billion'. Either way, maybe its a sign to show than Bandai shouldnt fuck around and actually make a solid game in the first place instead of porting it everywhere in the future.

They were riding on the Tales trend too much, in the end, dug themselves a deeper grave.

As long as Bandai keeps rolling out model kits, I ain't complaining.

Perhaps trying to localize more than a game every 10 could help with sales...

Maybe the execs spent the money on sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll.

As far as the firing of 10% of its employees to "save money", they may be heading down the Gonzo route.

Its your own fucking fault for not delivering the perfect ToV in europe.

They have financial problems? No wonder, if they do not want to release their games outside Japan and make money :p

these pictures are so miss leading.

With all the games that they're pumping out it makes you wonder just where they are wasting their money?

Failing amusement facilities?
Over paid management?
Who knows....

Wow the ps3 version of Vesperia way better then the xbox version, yet they don't plan to release it over seas?
What kind of sense does that make?

So it SRW NEO selling poorly didn't help in this loss?

After Abyss tales it just went downhill, aparently.

Maybe they would be better off if they actually finished there fucking games when they release them.

Bastards fired me today. I had to delete almost 1 TB of archived data and new material from their serers before I left, so expect delays from new Tales of Fail

What about the Tales of Destiny Remake and DC?