Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period between October and December 2023.
According to the documents provided by the Tokyo-based company, sales for the whole company were 772,035 million yen (up 3.9% year-on-year), while operating profit was 78,282 million yen (down 26.3% year-on-year).
Looking at the Digital Business, which includes games, sales were 263,012 million yen (down 8.9% year-on-year), while segment profit was 1,615 million yen (down 96.5% year-on-year).
We learn that mainstay mobile games from the Dragon Ball and One Piece franchises performed stably both in Japan and overseas, while a new online game performed significantly below expectations.
FromSoftware's Armored Core VI: Fire of Rubicon (which you can purchase on Amazon) has proved popular, but overall sales of home video games declined due to unfavorable comparison with a stronger lineup in the past year.
The company also mentions valuation loss due to the online game mentioned above, and the review of the composition of the titles in development ahead of the next medium-term business plan. This likely means that some have been shelved or canceled.
We hear that Bandai Namco intends to promote stricter screening of its games, strategically develop games to obtain an optimal title portfolio and strengthen the overall development management via the collaboration with Bandai Namco Studios. This reorganization of the portfolio and development is going to put an emphasis on quality.
Due to the results mentioned above, the company has revised its full-year operating profit forecast downward from 125,000 million yen to 82,000 million yen, a 34% cut.
While the online game that performed below expectation has not been mentioned by name, it's likely that it's Blue Protocol, which has struggled to achieve a large fanbase following its release in Japan for PC first and then for PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. The game is still scheduled to come to the West at some point this year for the same platforms, localized by Amazon.
If you'd like to compare today's results with historical data, you can read Bandai Namco's results for the previous quarter, published in November.
If you're interested in more gaming industry financial results, today we got the announcement from Sony, including an update on PS5 shipments and a revision of the sales prediction for the console for the full fiscal year.
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