Bandai Namco Posts $350,000,000 Loss, Will Sack 10%
- Categories: Games, News
- Date: Feb 2, 2010 22:21 JST
- Tags: Announcements, Business, Marketing, Namco Bandai, PS3, Tales Series, Wii
Bandai Namco has announced a 31 billion yen loss for fiscal 2009, after previously predicting 8.5 billion yen in profits; the company announced its intent to sack almost 10% of its 7,000 strong workforce to stem the flow of red ink, some 630 people.
Explaining the losses, Bandai blamed it in particular on its gaming division (but also on its failing amusement facilities and the cost of sacking its more useless employees):
Especially regarding our game content division’s console titles, our biggest title for the period, “Tekken 6,” met expectations, but amidst a depressed market our other major titles underperformed, causing these adverse results.
Suspicions soon fell upon its latest Tales release:
Tales of Fantasia – 249,000 (SNES ’95)
Tales of Destiny – 829,000 (PS ’97)
Tales of Eternia – 669,000 (PS ’00)
Tales of Destiny 2 – 763,000 (PS2 ’02)
Tales of Symphonia – 323,000 (GC ’03)
Tales of Rebirth – 596,000 (PS2 ’04)
Tales of Legendia – 343,000 (PS2 ’05)
Tales of the Abyss – 556,000 (PS2 ’05)
Tales of the Tempest – 206,000 (DS ’06)
Tales of Innocence – 246,000 (DS ’07)
Tales of Symphonia – 212,000 (Wii ’08)
Tales of Vesperia β – 203,000 (360 ’08)
Tales of Hearts – 259,000 (DS ’08)
Tales of Vesperia – 338,000 (PS3 ’09)
Tales of Graces – 189,000 (Wii ’09)
Possibly remaking the same game a dozen or more times is not such a wise strategy after all. Wii owning Tales fans might also be wary of participating in a paid beta-test for Tales of Graces’ presumed PS3 release.
Of course, none of this can explain a 40 billion yen (450 million dollar) drop in profits.
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Hey, why not quit rehashing the Tales series and allow the Xenosaga series to be complete, for real this time?
xenosaga is going to continue, well kinda the way it continued xenogears , just search for xenoblade.
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.
That's Konami.
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.
Thanks, we were already fixing that issue.
I love the tales series and I sincerely hope they report more loses, so they change their business methods and stop giving international fans incomplete tales like what happened with symphonia and vesperia, seriously if they keep screwing people over with things like that people will hate the tales series and thats something that would eventually translate to fewer sales and then to stop releasing tales of games, which I don't like, sadly the execs sometimes need to go through big losses to realise they are fucking their fans and change their ways
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
Fuck Tekken.
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
And once Square Enix falls, good companies like Bioware and the guys who made the Shin Megami Tensei series will be on top.
Square failed a long time ago when it released FF after FF titles.
do you even know how much they have sold with the crapiest FF release?? goes to show how much you don't know
though i have to admit they to change their perception of "new" style of gaming is always good, while Bandai Namco needs to stop thinking in the same lines of making games almost as it is.
and oh yeah.... do you even know how many copies did FF VII sold? FF VIII??
FF7&8 sold very good cause they ARE good. Free worlds, CITIES, character development and side missions to kill the time.
For strictly linear games i could buy a shitty xbox and play halo.
So .. in case square won't change the basics in FF15 .. then byebye FF
So sales = fun? Go back to school. I could care less how many copies were sold, there are plenty of games that shit over FF yet poor marketing lead to failure. Thousands of games that never got any hype and no one noticed them.
Atlus made it
HA! That what you get for not localizing perfect Vesperia you trolling corprait fucks.
Eat shit.
There are a lot of 360 owners who bought the game that felt that the perfect version of the game shouldn't be released because they would have felt cheated. 360 doesn't have a large enough following in Japan to create a situation where people would be angry for getting a better version on a different console. And Bandai Namco may have thought that after a year to work on the new one and release it, then to have to localize it elsewhere may have taken too long and there would not be a big enough market for the old game anymore. Tales games are not that popular recently and it would have been a risk to release it. Sure businesses need to take risks sometimes but that doesn't mean they always will and it wont necessarily be on what u want them to take chances on. Also there are probably only maybe around 20 people on this site that is vocal about their dissatisfaction with Bandai Namco's decisions, and maybe around 50 more people who don't post that also feel the same way. There just doesn't seem to be enough people who really want the game to be released. Sure maybe more people say they want it released but they don't actually care one way or the other if it is or isn't. You may feel that there are more people in agreement with you on the issue than there actually is because you can gather on this one issue and complain, but in reality there are very few people who seem to really care. petitiononline only received 954 signatures on their Vesperia petition, and even if you were to quadruple that number, there just isn't enough people who seem to care to even consider localizing it.
Except whoever made that decision probably won't be effected by this at all, it'll be lower level staff that will lose their jobs and will "eat shit". Awesome sense of justice you have.
It's nice that you're so full of nerd rage though, puberty must be getting you down.
I'm pretty sure this guy is long past puberty
somewhere in man-child stage, perhaps?
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..
Nah, the Tales of Destiny remake and Tales of Rebirth are probably the best games in the series. ToD2, on the other hand, is kinda shitty.
Maybe the title of their next game will be Tales of Bankruptcy?