Bandai Namco Sees Massive Drop In YoY Profits As Blue Protocol JP Falls To Deliver
It’s been a tough year for video game companies the world over as sales continue to drop in the aftermath of the pandemic boom. Bandai Namco’s digital entertainment division in particular saw a whopping 98% drop in gross profit and an 6.7% dip in net sales year-over-year, according to the company’s Q3 2023 financial report.
In a follow-up statement, the company attributed the massive profit drop to the natural decline of sales from Elden Ring which sold over 20 million copies from February 2021 to February 2022. The company’s other IPs, like Armored Core, Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Tekken, all did pretty well but just couldn’t match Elden Ring’s record-breaking sales. Blue Protocol’s Japanese launch also fell significantly short of the company’s expectations.
Unfortunately, the company’s recent losses have forced it to cancel at least five in-development titles and have laid down stricter development standards, reworked its development process, and changed the way they documented expenses, all of which were counted against the company’s Q3 2023 profits.
“In the future, we will build an optimal and well-balanced title portfolio, examine our development system carefully, and strengthen development with an emphasis on quality,” Bandai Namco said. “The associated technical research expenses for this were higher than expected at the beginning of the year.”
Tekken 8 has also proved to be a huge success with 2 million units sold in the few weeks since its launch. It’s a far cry from the 13.4 million copies that Elden Ring sold in its first month, but Bandai Namco expects to sell more copies of Tekken 8 well into the next fiscal year.
The company also teased a massive DLC for Elden Ring and a new Dragon Ball game in the works. Blue Protocol is also still on track for release sometime this year. Hopefully, it won’t be a repeat of its Japanese launch.
