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Bandai Namco
Bandai Namco logo (2022)
Type Public

Private (subsidiary of Namco Bandai Holdings)

Founded Bandai: 1950

Namco: 1955
Namco Bandai Holdings: 2005
Bandai Namco Entertainment: 2006

Headquarters Japan Ōta, Tokyo, Japan

USA Santa Clara, California, USA

Key people Masaya Nakamura (Founder)

Kyushiro Takagi(CEO)

Industry Video games

arcade games
toy maker
animation
amusement
Leisure industry

Revenue 3.889 billion USD (2007)[1]
Net income 205.438 million USD (2007)
Website www.bandainamco.co.jp

Namco Bandai Holdings, Incorporated (NBHD) (株式会社バンダイナムコホールディングス Kabushiki-gaisha Bandai Namuko Hōrudingusu?) is the Japanese holding company for Namco Bandai Group, formed from the merger of Namco and Bandai. It has interests in toys, video and arcade games, and amusement facilities. The new entity was founded on September 29, 2005. Officially, Bandai purchased Namco; however, both companies have equal power in group decisions. Namco Bandai Group companies are organised under five strategic business units (SBUs) and the Affiliated Business Group.

Bandai is currently the world's third largest producer of toys. Prior to the merger, Bandai owned Sunrise, a Japanese animation company, which became a subsidiary of NBHD following the merger.

NBHD also fully acquired developers Banpresto (which will be absorbed into Namco Bandai Games on April 1, 2008) and Namco Tales Studio since the merger. Formerly, both were partially owned by Bandai and Namco respectively.

On March 31, 2006, Namco and Bandai's video game operations merged into Namco Bandai Games Inc. (NBGI). On the same day an NBHD subsidiary was created and the Namco Ltd. corporate name, its amusement facility divisions, and incubator divisions were transferred to the new subsidiary.

as Namco[]

Namco Limited (株式会社ナムコ Kabushiki Gaisha Namuko?) is an amusement company based in Japan, best known overseas for video games development.

On September 29, 2005, Namco officially merged with Japanese toymaker Bandai to form Namco Bandai Holdings Inc (NBHD), one of the largest entertainment companies in Japan. Namco became a wholly owned subsidiary of the holding company. Although officially the merger was absorption, "Under the holding company, Namco, Bandai and other affiliated companies will mutually cooperate and contribute to the growth of the whole group based on their respective business strategies."

Under the holding company, on March 31, 2006, Namco merged with Bandai's video game operations and was renamed Namco Bandai Games Inc. (NBGI), which is also the head of NBHD's Game Contents Strategic Business Unit (SBU).

Namco Ltd.'s arcade venue, theme park and exploratory businesses as well as the Namco Ltd. corporate name and logo were spun off to create a new sister company. It is the head of NBHD's Amusement SBU.

History[]

Namco 1: now Namco Bandai Games[]

Namco was founded in Tokyo in 1955, by Masaya Nakamura under the name Nakamura Manufacturing Ltd. It began by producing mechanical rocking-horses and similar children's rides, which were installed in a number of department stores in Yokohama and Nihonbashi. It continued this line of production through the 1960s, and expanded with the addition of rides modeled after Walt Disney characters in 1966.

After the company's brand name was changed to Namco in 1971, it acquired the Japanese division of Atari in 1974, thus bringing Namco into the coin-operated video game market. Namco Enterprises Asia Ltd. was established in Hong Kong and was soon followed by Namco America, Inc., based in California. In 1978, Namco released its first arcade video game Gee Bee which was designed by Toru Iwatani. He also designed two sequels, Bomb Bee and Cutie Q, which were released in 1979.

The year 1980 saw the introduction of the company's most famous coin-operated arcade game, Pac-Man, which was also developed by Iwatani. The main character, Pac-Man, has now been made the company's official mascot. When Nintendo began producing its Famicom home console unit, Namco started the development of game titles for it, beginning with Galaxian, which had first been introduced to arcades in 1979. Video games for this console were released in Japan under the moniker Namcot.

Namco was the industry's first manufacturer to develop and release a multi-player, multi-cabinet competitive game, Final Lap, in 1987. This game allowed up to 8 players to compete when four 2-player cabinets were linked in a simple network. By 1988, the company's capital exceeded ¥5,500 million Yen. In 1989, another racing simulation game, Winning Run, was released; that same year, the company's expertise with driving simulation matured with the development of the Eunos Roadster Driving Simulator, a joint venture with the Mazda Motor Corporation, followed by an educational program for traffic safety developed with Mitsubishi. On the other hand in the vision of barrier-free amusement Namco started up business for the elderly and the disabled with "Talking Aid" in 1985.

In the 1990s, Namco began directly selling coin-operated arcade games in the United States through subsidiary Namco America. Sennichimae Plabo was opened in Osaka, featuring a new concept of large-scale arcade amusement, and Namco Wonder Eggs, a theme park, was opened in Tokyo. Additional amusement parks were opened, including Namco Wonder Park Sagamihara and Namco Wonder City.

In 1993, Namco merged its US arcade operation, Namco Operations, Inc., with the newly acquired Aladdin's Castle, Inc. to form Namco Cybertainment, Incorporated, bringing the company to the forefront as the largest arcade company in the world. In subsequent years, Namco Cybertainment, Inc. (NCI) purchased several other arcade operators, further strengthening the company's overall arcade operation. NCI now operates arcades under the names Time Out, CyberStation, Aladdin's Castle, Diamond Jim's, Space Port, and Pocket Change. Throughout the 2000s Namco Cybertainment has continued to grow. They are the only operator of national scope. They manage over 1,000 locations in forty-eight states, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. On any given day, customers play games over three-quarters of a million times in locations they manage. They have nearly 30,000 games in their inventory, far surpassing any other operator. If the games were stood end to end, they would stretch nearly 40 miles. Namco Cybertainment owns the largest number of the most popular manufactured games in North America, including Nintendo, Sega, Midway, Konami, ICE, and NAMCO AMERICA. They are generally a coin-op manufacturer's largest customer.

Also in 1993, Ridge Racer, a driving simulation game, entered arcades, featuring 3D computer graphics; the game was later released for the Sony PlayStation. Another of the company's most famous games, Tekken, was released in 1994, which was also soon ported to the PlayStation.

In 1995 the game Soul Edge (Soul Blade in the PAL region) was released. This was the second game to feature weapons in a three-dimensional fighting environment on a console system (Battle Arena Toshinden was the first). With its Tekken and Soul franchises, Namco has been dominating the 3D fighting game market. They also released Cyber Sled, a futuristic 3-D battle tank game, which was also ported to PlayStation. Some light gun games were also released such as Point Blank and Time Crisis.

In 1996 it acquired the controlling share of the Japanese movie company Nikkatsu.

On September 7 2005, it span-out Nikkatsu to Index Holding.

In September2005, Namco merged with Bandai to become "Namco Bandai Holdings", the 3rd largest video game entity in Japan. As such, Namco is now a part of the Namco Bandai Group.

In January 2006, a Namco Bandai subsidiary was established in the U.S. to handle mobile games in North America, called Namco Networks America Inc. Working with the new 'next-gen' platform, Namco is able to port many of their time-tested arcade games to cell phones.

In March 2006, Namco Networks also opened an e-commerce operation, www.clubNAMCO.com offering official merchandise based on Namco games.

Under the parent Namco Bandai Holdings (NBHD), it absorbed Bandai's video game operations and was renamed "Namco Bandai Games Inc." on March 31, 2006.

Other businesses (theme parks and exploratory) were transferred to a new NBHD subsidiary which was also transferred its old corporate name of "Namco Ltd." as well. See the "Namco 2" section below for the subsidiary.

Namco 2: amusement facility developer and operator[]

On March 31, 2006, Namco Ltd.'s amusement venue and incubation businesses including rehabilitainment (a contraction of rehabilitation and entertainment) were transferred to the newly created NBHD subsidiary which inherited the Namco Ltd. corporate name.

It is the head of NBHD's Amusement SBU. Namco Ltd. itself operates within Japan and delegates overseas operations for the regional / field based sister companies in the Amusement SBU.

Namco Cybertainment, Inc., the American arcade division of Namco Ltd., is the largest chain of arcades in North America.

as Namco Tales Studio[]

Namco Tales Studio logo

Namco Tales Studio Ltd., formerly known as Wolf Team ((株)ウルフチーム, Urufu Chīmu), was a Japanese video game development company founded in 1986. The company was renamed in 2003 when Telenet Japan sold part of its stake and made Namco the majority shareholder. Namco Tales Studio was originally the primary developer of the Tales RPG series, as it had been since the series' beginning. In November 2011, it was announced that the current Tales Studio would be dissolved and would merge with their publisher, Namco Bandai Games. In February 2012, it was announced that the 80 people of the Tales team would join Bandai Namco Studios.

History[]

Originally headed by Masahiro Akishino, Wolf Team became independent from Telenet in 1987, was reintegrated in 1990 and got merged with another Telenet subsidiary called Lasersoft, then was completely absorbed in an internal restructuring at Telenet in 1993 at which point most of the staff left together with Akishino.

The remaining staff were the then-very-young programmer Yoshiharu Gotanda, designer Masaki Norimoto, director Joe Asanuma, graphic artist Yoshiaki Inagaki, sound composer Motoi Sakuraba, and sound effect designer Ryota Furuya. Wolf Team went on to create games such as Sol-Feace and Hiouden: Mamono-tachi tono Chikai, which faced weak sales. They were also notable for porting laserdisc video games to the Sega Mega-CD, including some Japan-only arcades like Time Gal and Ninja Hayate (released as Revenge of the Ninja for the Sega Mega-CD outside Japan).

For Tale Phantasia, a game concept by Gotanda, they looked for an outside publisher with a better reputation. After approaching Enix, Telenet struck a contract with Namco. Namco insisted on many changes to the game, including changing the title to Tales of Phantasia. The conflict over these changes pushed the game's release from 1994 into late 1995. Most of the initial staff left during this dispute and founded tri-Ace in early 1995.

To continue the lucrative arrangement with Namco to develop the Tales series, Telenet re-staffed Wolf Team and retained some other staff, such as Motoi Sakuraba on a freelance basis. Wolf Team dedicated itself to the series, developing or co-developing nearly every game. In 2003, Namco assumed majority ownership of the company and renamed it Namco Tales Studio.

At the time of its renaming Namco owned 60% of this venture, Telenet Japan/Kazuyuki Fukushima retained 34%, and Tales series director Eiji Kikuchi received 6%. (Kikuchi, who was the head of Telenet's game development department for 10 years, left Telenet to head the new team full-time.) Effective on April 1, 2006, the then-newly merged Bandai Namco Holdings bought the remaining shares from Telenet Japan, cutting the last link to the developers' former employer and increasing its stockholding majority to 94%. In October 2007, Telenet filed for bankruptcy and closed, putting an end to the Wolf Team name. Namco later acquired the remaining shares.

Namco Tales Studios remained the primary developer of the so-called "mothership" titles of the Tales series, with the exception of Tales of Legendia and Tales of Innocence. Legendia was developed by an internal Namco development team called Team Melfes; while Innocence was developed by an independent developer, Alfa System, which also developed various spinoff games in the Tales series.

In November 2011, it was announced that the current Tales Studio would be dissolved and would merge with their publisher, Namco Bandai Games. In February 2012, it was announced that the 80 people of the Tales team would join Bandai Namco Studios.

Developed games[]

Namco Tales Studio has developed games for the GameCube, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3.

Game Release date Platform
Tales of Phantasia 1995 Super NES
Tales of Destiny 1997 PlayStation
Tales of Eternia 2000 PlayStation
Tales of Destiny 2 2002 PlayStation 2
Tales of Symphonia 2003 GameCube
Tales of Rebirth 2004 PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable
Tales of the Abyss 2005 PlayStation 2
Tales of Destiny Remake 2006 PlayStation 2
Tales of Destiny Director's Cut 2008 PlayStation 2
Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World 2008 Wii
Tales of Vesperia 2008 Xbox 360, PlayStation 3
Tales of Hearts 2008 Nintendo DS
Tales of Graces 2009 Wii
Keroro RPG: Kishi to Musha to Densetsu no Kaizoku 2010 Nintendo DS
Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon X 2010 PlayStation Portable
Tales of Graces F 2010 PlayStation 3
Tales of Xillia 2011 PlayStation 3

Notes: 1 Tales Studio sound staff only

For a complete list of Tales of games, see Tales (video game series).

As Wolf Team[]

  • Aisle Lord
  • Anett Futatabi
  • Arcus
  • Arcus II: Silent Symphony
  • Arcus 3
  • Arcus Odyssey
  • Akushu: Kagerou no Jidai wo Koe te
  • Apros: Daichi no Shou Kaze no Tankyuu Sha hen
  • Cliff Hanger
  • Cobra Command
  • Crystal Chaser: Tenkuu no Masuishou
  • D: European Mirage
  • Daitoua Mokujiroku Goh
  • Diamond Players
  • Devastator
  • Dino Land
  • Earnest Evans
  • El Viento
  • Fhey Area
  • Final Zone (FZ Senki AXIS)
  • Gaudi: Barcelona no Kaze
  • Granada
  • Goh 2
  • Gulf War Soukouden
  • Hiōden
  • Hiōden 2
  • Hiōden: Mamono-tachi tono Chikai
  • Jinmu Denshou
  • Mid-Garts
  • Neugier: Umi to Kaze no Kodō
  • Niko^2
  • Revenge of the Ninja
  • Road Blaster
  • Ryū: Naki no Ryū Yori
  • Seirei Shinseiki - Fhey Area
  • Shinsengumi: Bakumatsu Genshikou
  • Sol-Feace/Sol-Deace
  • Span of Dream
  • Suzaku
  • Tales of Destiny
  • Tales of Destiny 2
  • Tales of Eternia
  • Tales of Phantasia
  • Tales of Phantasia: Narikiri Dungeon
  • Tales of the World: Narikiri Dungeon 2
  • Tenbu Limited / Mankan Zenseki
  • Tenbu: Sangokushi Seishi
  • The Grail Hunter
  • Tokyo Twilight Busters
  • Time Gal
  • Valis: The Fantasm Soldier
  • Yaksa
  • Zan: Kagerou no Toki
  • Zan: Yasha Enbukyoku
  • Zan II: Spirits
  • Zan 2: Kagerou no Jidai
  • Zan 2: Kagerou no Jidai Soshuhen
  • Zan 3: Tenun Ware ni Ari
  • Zan Gear

Soul games published[]

References[]

  1. ^ Bandai, Namco to merge in Sept to form Japan's No 3 toy, game group - UPDATE 2. Forbes (2005-05-02). Retrieved on 2008-03-31.
  2. ^ NAMCO LIMITED and Bandai Co., Ltd (2005): Notice of Management Integration Through Establishment of a Joint Holding Company of NAMCO LIMITED and Bandai Co., Ltd. Press Release, 2005-05-02, http://www.bandainamco.co.jp/en/releases/2005050201.html retrieved on 2007-09-19.

External links[]

Gallery[]

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