The good news for Namco Bandai is that they lost less money for the first six months of their fiscal year than they did at this point last year, when they lost an astounding ¥6b ($74m). The bad news: they still lost money this time around, to the tune of ¥1.93b ($24m). The losses were on relatively strong sales of ¥174b ($2.13b), 41% of which came from its content division, which includes games. The strongest selling games in the US were Tekken 6 (1.07m units), followed by Despicable Me (390k). Overall, the company performed strongest on the Nintendo DS, which saw 20 new titles and sales of 2.035m units, followed by the PSP (4, 1.825m) and PS3 (11, 1.201m).
Despite the fact that Namco largely stemmed their losses and are looking at somewhat increased sales forecasts for FY11, Andriasang points out that their forecasts should be taken with a grain of salt:
Namco Bandai wanted to sell the following:
Dead to Rights Retribution: 700,000 units
Clash of the Titans: 700,000 units
Enslaved Odyssey to the West: 1,000,000 units
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom: 1,000,000 units
Splatterhouse: 1,000,000 units
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2: 700,000 units
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien Cosmic Destruction: 700,000 unitsNamco Bandai sold, or expects to sell, the following:
Dead to Rights Retribution: 350,000 units
Clash of the Titans: 250,000 units
Enslaved Odyssey to the West: 800,000 units
Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom: 300,000 units
Splatterhouse: 350,000 units
Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm 2: 1,000,000 units
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien Cosmic Destruction: 800,000 unitsWith exception to Ben 10 and Naruto, it looks like all games either underperformed or are expected to underperform.
Some of those titles were spectacular failures, such as Splatterhouse, Dead to Rights: Retribution and Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom. As noted, the only two games that exceeded were games for franchises that have followings among children in the West (Naruto, Ben 10).
The numbers for those two games, combined with the fact that despite them, Japan was still the biggest area of sale for the company, I’m going to reiterate my prediction that Namco Bandai starts to cut the West out of all but the most notable, mainstream franchises. This could be bad for fans of the Tales franchise, and for anyone looking for Super Robot Taisen OG Saga: Endless Frontier EXCEED.
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