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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No pirated psp game loss? how about gundam vs gundam next, ikki tousen annd naruto shippuden series?
I think those are their minor games and probably doesn't give them a lot of revenue.
no way GvG is minor in japan
Why the down vote? He is telling the truth. The week that Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus came out PSP out-sold every major consoles out there, including the Wii and the PS3.
Assassin's Creed III, an assassin girl in the time of Hitler's Reign? or continuation of Ezio's story? Surely not Desmond yet, so what have you heard?
Velvet Assassin :\
Bullshit but everything can happend T.T
IIRC there should be a stand-alone expansion to assassin's creed 2, following Ezio's adventures in some other country, THEN it should come to the third game. Since I'm too lazy to check the details, go and read the wiki article for yourselves.
they might make more money if they released ANY games overseas. but they are gay and keep it to themselves. i'm boycotting their ass.
i doubt the pirating has much to do with it. i mean look at the ds. i think its the whole idea of buying namco was the real ticket to failure. idk but to tthis day, i still say that was a greedy move.
What about Gundam?
what the hell does that have to do with videogames? it's a toyline they're seperate departments.
gameplay is the same over and over again. it feels like u're playing the same game with just different characters.. over and over.. repeative is boring... but then again... being creative like SquareEnix isn't good too.. so idk..
Gundam VS Gundam NEXT is an example of the PSP Game. I think that is what the Annoymous meant.
Besides that, Gundam also have games produced for them. That doesn't mean when you hear "gundam| means you only think of the Gunplas.
it's really that i don't think the games are that huge. they sell but are dwarfed by other brands in gaming and aren't one of the most lucrative parts of the gundam franchise.
Not sure how they fared in sales but how about a Dynasty Warriors Gundam 3?
Musou Hokuten will boost their sales when in comes out.
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.
Soul Calibur 4, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, Tekken 6(PSP, PS3, X360), Gundam VS Gundam NEXT, .hack// series, upcoming God Eater and such...
Lot of crap :} .
No. Lots of "Tales of" crap.
i think he's talking about the time they were one company. so namco games like the soul series dont count. production of games dropped heavily after they joined together. no ridge sequel, no xeno, no ace combat etc. think about it. they rely heavily on one hit titles like tekken. anime games are now scarcer than ever. they dont even want to translate half the games marketed in japan. the western audience cannot depend on them no longer.
Taiko no Tatsujin.
Ace Combat series, which is only for 360
Except for every other game which were on PS and PS2
Huh, how could you forget Idolmaster?
Developer =/= Publisher
At least gonzo knows not to fuck around with its fans. Assuming they have fans, anyway.
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…
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.
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.
honestly if they spent the money on sex drugs and rock-n-roll you think they would have made a decent game at one point. they're not realy capcom now, those bastards deserve sex drugs and rock-n-roll.
capcom are assholes, but they do have money. this is why we can't have nice things
What are you trying to say???
Perhaps trying to localize more than a game every 10 could help with sales...
No, not likely. Tales games are damn lucky to push over 100k outside of Japan. I think only Vesperia and both Symphonia games have done so.
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.
should have stopped after Tales of destiny 2. The rest after it fails..
Maybe the title of their next game will be Tales of Bankruptcy?
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.
HA! That what you get for not localizing perfect Vesperia you trolling corprait fucks.
Eat shit.
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?
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.
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.
Atlus made it
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??
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.
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