HARD times call for harder decisions, with Bandai Namco’s recent financial report revealing that the company has suffered an 8.9% drop in net sales for its third fiscal quarter ended December 2023, along with a 96.5% drop in income.
The drop in profit was apparently due to the exponential sales of 2022’s Elden Ring. The numbers that the game made were never replicated by any other title in the subsequent year. The company has thus enforced tighter quality control for all in-development games.
Following the report, a Q&A was published with a company representative, which confirmed that the games were cancelled due to a “loss on disposal” and “internal rules regarding evaluation”, according to Video Games Chronicle’s translation.
Bandai Namco views the changes as necessary due to the longer development period for games in this era, while also factoring how long turning in a profit would take based on how much was invested during each game’s development period.
Despite the doom and gloom, the company views the recent Tekken 8 as a success. Being both well-received by fans of the fighting game genre and praised by critics (it is universally acclaimed on Metacritic), Tekken 8 has sold over two million copies since release.
On the bright side, Bandai Namco revealed that work continues on the highly anticipated expansion to Elden Ring, which it is preparing for release, along with a new Dragon Ball game.