Bandai Namco Europe’s VP of Marketing and Digital, Hervé Hoerdt, has revealed that the company is aiming to “double” the size of its business through the release of new IPs, by doing more localizations, and by targeting more platforms.
Speaking to MCV, Hoerdt noted that Bandai Namco is a Japanese-centric company and although it has “great content” in its portfolio, the publisher has been appealing to the same audience – something it wants to change now. He further explained:
Japanese companies mostly develop on Nintendo and PlayStation, but more and more we have the Xbox, especially for the UK market, and PC. We also want our fans to enjoy localized games, so we’re doing more games in languages like Polish, Russian and Arabic with more to come.
Last but not least, it’s about the IPs. Obviously, we think about the big anime IPs like One Piece, Naruto and Dragonball, but our Japanese content is only addressing a limited part of the market segment. We’ve also been working with studios in Europe and we’ve been going back to Japan saying, ‘Okay, these are the hottest ones and we’ll bring these new IPs to market over the next five years.’ That’s a pillar of our company, and we’re going to use it to double our business.
Back in August, Bandai Namco announced a partnership with Dontnod Entertainment to release a new narrative adventure IP, the details of which are still under wraps. Given its recent string of releases, it seems that the publisher wants to increase its portfolio of smaller, indie games as well.
[Source: MCV]
