News: Bandai and Namco to merge

May 02, 2005, 09:35 AM

by brandon, via Namco / Bandai -
[permalink]

In a move that will likely be frightening to many, Bandai and Namco have decided to merge entirely, pending shareholder approval - this includes the game (home and arcade), toy and animation divisions. The new company will be called Namco Bandai Holdings. While potentially just another fruitless merger, ala Sega into Sammy or Hudson into Konami, the company's main objectives don't overlap terribly. So it's quite possible that this could be more along the lines of the Square-Enix merger, with a publisher and a developer sharing assets and IP, but not necessarily treading on each other's feet too much. What's been announced so far is that Bandai's stores will be attached to Namco's amusement centers, Bandai will market Namco's software-originated IP, an apparently the companies will be co-developing - likely Namco will indeed be making a few more licensed anime games from the looks of it.