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Image credit:Bandai Namco
Image credit:Bandai Namco
Coming off of 2022’s biggest game inElden Ringhas been a tricky time for Bandai Namco, it seems. The publishers have announced that they have cancelled “at least” five games in the works to help overcome a significant drop in income over the last year, adopting a new approach to development that will focus on quality.
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The decision to cancel five games was made due to their “higher than expected” development costs and after being evaluated against the publisher’s internal rules for in-development titles, a Bandai Namco representative explained during a recent Q&A session following theirlatest financial results. (Thanks,VGC.)
Of course, the big reason here is the immense success ofElden Ringin 2022. Bandai Namco said that whileArmored Core 6was “popular”, it simply wasn’t Elden Ring. (What is?) Spin-offs from popular anime series likeDragon Balland One Piece also held steady, but couldn’t make up for the Elden Ring-shaped hole in last year’s releases.
On the more positive end of things, this year’sTekken 8is apparently faring well, shifting over two million copies and expected to see its popularity maintained for a while to come - helping the company’s next financials.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Bandai Namco
Still, Bandai confirmed that they had cancelled development of “at least five other titles”. As well as cutting down the number of games, the publishers said they were already working to increase the quality of future releases. As part of that, they are looking at focusing on games with more mainstream appeal for “casual” players alongside their big “strategic” releases.
“Since the second half of the previous fiscal year, we have changed our development structure, setting stricter standards for proceeding with development, narrowing down titles, and changing the method of recording development expenses” the rep said.
