Bandai and Namco To Merge

Entertainment company Bandai announced today that they've purchased game creator Namco and as of September of this year will be merging into a single company. From the article: "Bandai shares fell 2.5 percent to 2,335 yen as of 2:27 p.m. in Tokyo, after dropping as much as 3.8 percent. Namco shares rose 8.8 percent to 1,530 yen, headed for their biggest gain since November 2003. The companies' shares were suspended for the first one and a half hours of trading, following an earlier report of the merger plan by the Nihon Keizai newspaper."

Comments

Hmm

[Daetrin]

Was Bandai the one that there were rumors of Nintendo trying to buy out awhile ago? This would make them a much more valuable acquisiton, but probably more difficult to actually acquire.

Re:Hmm

[Lynxara]

Are you aware of how big Bandai is? Nintendo trying to buy them out would be like Apple trying to buy Disney.

Bandai has huge entertainment assets for animation, live-action, toys, apparel, all kinds of things, as well as a gigantic international distribution chain. Now all that marketing muscle is going to be behind Namco's original video game properties as well as Bandai's licenses.

Nintendo Games... finally?

[Elranzer]

With Bandai being *in* with Nintendo, maybe they will finally force Namco to release some of their games multi-console. Soul Calibur 3 being a PS2-exclusive is very disappointing, as that slow system is not built for fighting games. Maybe Nintendo will finally buy Bandai (and Namco along with it) and Soul Calibur 4 will be Revolution-exclusive. Mwa-ha!

What this means to us.

[AzraelKans]

Either we FINALLY get some good Dragon Ball Z/anime games (or at least not as crappy) or all Namco games get merged with anime characters and are launched at subpar quality.

Either way prepare to read this line in the future:

Heihachi Vs San Goku!