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Let's look over Nintendo's relationship with Bandai Namco

Ever notice that basically out of all the companies at the moment Nintendo has the tightest relationship with falls into two publishers; Bandai Namco, and Tecmo Koei.

For Tecmo Koei so far Nintendo's worked with them on a number of exclusives, but so far this gen it's more or less only produced a small handful, though notable titles, as I illustrated in a previous thread. :)

So this is like Nintendo's 3rd-party relations Part 2: The Reckoning Tale of Pikachu Electric Boogaloo? :O

Anyway, let's look at today's publisher in question; Bandai Namco.

They have so far have had by far a much higher output on Wii U in terms of directly with Nintendo and even had some 3rd-party exclusives, believe it or not.

Oh and there's this bit about Nintendo trying to buy Bandai at around 2003, man that would've been something else. It's rumored IIRC that this is what prompted the Bandai Namco merger and the eventual buy-out of Monolith by Nintendo, but I'm not certain.

Anyway, let's look at the immediate examples in no real order on Wii U:



The biggest example right now is their direct involvement with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and 3DS. It also of course features Pac-Man as a playable character.

This game had a large mesh of folks from the company IIRC, including Harada, some Tales folks, the like.



This was also developed by Bandai Namco. They've worked on sports games before like Famista. I'd guess that team worked on this.



Believe it or not, they also had a hand in Mario Kart 8 as shown in the credits. I'd certainly believe that it was the Mario Kart Arcade GP team that was involved. Who else? :p

Next is a game that while not a Ninendo IP game, does feature Nintendo IP use:



Tekken features Nintendo themed costumes such as Mario and company, Captain Falcon, Fox, etc.

Now for a couple of key exclusives:

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Continuing their line of Taiko series, the series makes it's HD console debut on Wii U exclusively. Minor exception is the arcade releases and the Taiko mini-game in I believe Yakuza 5. Actually, is that staying in the western release? Huh.


Here we have Project Treasure which is a F2P loot collecting game of some sort. But the major bit is that this features Monolith's famous leading lady KOS-MOS from the Xenosaga series, and as far as I'm aware, is making her HD debut in this game officially as a playable character.

Also let's look at two arcade games:


Here's Mario Kart Arcade GP DX, the 3rd in the Arcade GP series that began on the Triforce board. This is what we say prior to Mario Kart 8's unveiling and some thought this represented what to expect from MK8. I think it's fair to say that wasn't the case. :p


Here's Pokken Tournament, which as the name implies is a Pokemon fighting game by the Tekken team. It was actually TPC's idea when Harada came to them to license music for a Taiko game (Taiko Wii U? That has XY music). More info about this is coming tomorrow! STAY TUNED!

Now what's extra interesting is that on 3DS, Bandai Namco I believe is the very FIRST 3rd-party company to use Amiibos period.


One Piece uses them for costumes, and Ace Combat uses them for plane decals! (Now if we can just get a Ridge Racer 3D+ with Amiibo cars and 60fps we'd be golden...).

So the big question is; what's next?

I've wondered if Nintendo should attempt at securing an IP exclusively as one of their own but still owned by Bandai Namco, just like they're doing with Fatal Frame with Tecmo Koei.

My thoughts boil down to Xenosaga, Baten Kaitos, and Klonoa. All are unused franchises right now and Monolith's ownership makes the first two very fitting, but Klonoa also fits right at home, however one can say that's just adding yet another 2D platformer, regardless how awesome Klonoa is (please put the Wiimake on the Wii U eShop Bandai Namco!).

I can't think of any development hell games Nintendo could possibly pick up ala Bayonetta 2 and Devil's Third other than Tekken X Street Fighter, but that would be a huge deal since those are two very established franchises (would GAF even survive such an announcement?).

What Nintendo does need is more RPGs IMO and having Monolith work with Bandai Namco on a new Xenosaga or even Baten Kaitos (FYI, Nintendo completely published Baten Kaitos Origins worldwide, I assume they commissioned it themselves, this likely kickstarted their major relationship). Not to mention that KOS-MOS is in Project Treasure, which to me means it's highly probable that Monolith is involved as IIRC they've in the past been involved with all of her playable appearances. This would be a first time team-up of the two for a home console game since the buy-out. All previous team-ups were on DS and Project X Zone on 3DS.

Oh yeah, there's Project X Zone too!



This is the sequel to Monolith's Namco X Capcom on PS2, and this actually got localized this time! Now with Sega joining in for the fun. But NO Sonic, Pac-Man, or Klonoa! Seriously guys?

What do you think would be an appropriate pick up should Nintendo pull a Fatal Frame with Bandai Namco? What about another crossover game like Pokken Tournament and Hyrule Warriors with Tecmo Koei? Where do you see their relationship going?
 

Hatchtag

Banned
I wouldn't be surprised if they develop whatever the next Mario Sports game is. They're also probably going to end up doing Smash DLC, imo.
As for the Amiibo, I'm guessing Nintendo will lend out Amiibo use to a number of third parties, since having them usable in multiple games increases their value.
 
Nintendo was not ready for HD development, it's pretty clear about that. Namdai was the perfect company to help nintendo out, and I'm sure Nintendo paid well for their services.
 

Zalman

Member
Nintendo said last year they were looking for a development partner to finish up Star Fox. Maybe that ended up being Namco.
 

Armigr

Member
Nintendo said last year they were looking for a development partner to finish up Star Fox. Maybe that ended up being Namco.

That would make a lot of sense seeing as Namco also handled the development of Star Fox: Assault.
 

Kouriozan

Member
I'm currently on a GameCube Card RPG craze (PSO Episode 3, The Lost Kingdoms 1/2, Baten Kaitos +Origins) and I'd really want to see a new entry of Baten Kaitos.
It makes even more sense with the Gamepad/Dual Screen, I heard there was a DS game planed but got cancelled, iirc.
 
I've been wondering for awhile if Nintendo was trying to ease their way into purchasing Namco-Bandai. They trusted them with one of their biggest franchises, and Miyamoto adores Pac Man. I don't really know if Namco is doing great or not, I didn't think they were? Namco fits nicely with Nintendo, their IPs could easily be used by Nintendo and feel like Nintendo games.

That would be a fairly huge acquisition for them IP wise, but the idea of Pac Man, Dig Dug, etc being Nintendo series is pretty cool. If anything, it'd be worth it just for the classic arcade IPs, let alone Tales, Klonoa, etc that I'm sure Nintendo could make good use of. Or just buy the Namco half and the game IPs and leave Digimon and the toys to Bandai (as I don't think Nintendo would use them as well as the game IPs).

But Digimon and Pokemon under the same company would be all kinds of crazy to anyone who grew up in the late 90s.
 

Oregano

Member
I speculated that Bandai Namco might actually be involved with Amiibo but I don't think there's any evidence it's true. It just seemed too convenient that the publishers with a lot of experience in the toy market was not only involved with Smash Bros but decided to support Amiibo in their own titles.

EDIT:
I've been wondering for awhile if Nintendo was trying to ease their way into purchasing Namco-Bandai. They trusted them with one of their biggest franchises, and Miyamoto adores Pac Man. I don't really know if Namco is doing great or not, I didn't think they were? Namco fits nicely with Nintendo, their IPs could easily be used by Nintendo and feel like Nintendo games.

That would be a fairly huge acquisition for them IP wise, but the idea of Pac Man, Dig Dug, etc being Nintendo series is pretty cool. If anything, it'd be worth it just for the classic arcade IPs, let alone Tales, Klonoa, etc that I'm sure Nintendo could make good use of. Or just buy the Namco half and the game IPs and leave Digimon and the toys to Bandai (as I don't think Nintendo would use them as well as the game IPs).

But Digimon and Pokemon under the same company would be all kinds of crazy to anyone who grew up in the late 90s.

Bamco makes a huge amount of money on non-Nintendo platforms though so it would be a difficult acquisition. They're also one of the healthiest third parties in Japan.
 
They've come a long way. I remember Namco being rivals with Nintendo and putting their games on other platforms like PC Engine and Mega Drive... and later Playstation.
 

walnuts

Member
Well, Wii U is still missing some games coming to other consoles and PC, even to last gen consoles. We could say they also have a good relationships with Koei, because of Hyrule Warriors and Fatal Frame, but the situation is the same.

Both companies are releasing some ports, even exclusives, to Vita, whose situation is a lot worse than the Wii U right now (at least for me).

Anyway, it's great to see that somehow Nintendo is improving their relationships with some third parties.
 
Bandai also has a good relationship with playstation so if a xenosaga hd collection were to happen I can see it being on both Nintendo & Sony platforms
 

kitsuneyo

Member
I'm gutted that Pac-Man CE isn't on the eShop. I love those games, and I think Nintendo players in general love those games. Given the relationship and the inclusion in Smash, it's sad Wii U was passed over for Museum, although that release wasn't very good apparently. I really wish we could get more Pac-Man on Wii U.
 

Heyt

Banned
Even if they rely too much on licensed anime content I find Namco to be one of the most likeable pubs lately. As 3DS is my preferred platform right now I can only hope their relationship with Nintendo continues to improve.

So the big question is; what's next?

Well, the most obvious answer is Pokken to be released on WiiU. I don't see Nintendo securing Namco IPs but I can see them collaborating towards bringing suiting games to each platform such as Klonoa on 3DS.

Developing Nintendo IPs is surely going to happen more sometime in the future. Worked wonders with Smash, maybe some other Nintendo IP could benefit from Bamco's experience with arcade-ish games. Maybe something Battalion Wars or Excite bike/trucks/bots/gundams.
 

Balb

Member
Nintendo was not ready for HD development, it's pretty clear about that. Namdai was the perfect company to help nintendo out, and I'm sure Nintendo paid well for their services.

I think it's more that Namco Bandai has a lot of talent but little to work on on their own because of the state of console development in Japan.

I think the "Nintendo had trouble with HD development" angle is a little overblown. Their output this generation is in line with any other generation really.
 

Takao

Banned
Even both companies are releasing some ports, even exclusives, to Vita, whose situation is a lot worse than the Wii U right now (at least for me).

The majority of Bandai Namco's business comes from Japan. Vita's situation is in no way "a lot worse than Wii U" over there. Bandai Namco tried doing a few multi-platform games on Wii U, like Tekken Tag 2, Kamen Rider Battride Wars 2 and One Piece UWR. They sold very little.
 

Oregano

Member
The majority of Bandai Namco's business comes from Japan. Vita's situation is in no way "a lot worse than Wii U" over there. Bandai Namco tried doing a few multi-platform games on Wii U, like Tekken Tag 2, Kamen Rider Battride Wars 2 and One Piece UWR. They sold very little.

To be fair One Piece UWR bombed on PS3 and Vita in Japan too. I'm not sure what the platform breakdown for the west was.
 

mclem

Member
I'm sort-of amazed we've never had a Katamari title on a Nintendo system. It feels right, somehow. Maybe the moment's past, for now.
 
It's cool that they are working together, but a lot of their titles are still skipping Nintendo platforms. I imagine they hoped to get more multiplats since they've paid them so much and they have a lot of experience developing for their platforms.
 

walnuts

Member
The majority of Bandai Namco's business comes from Japan. Vita's situation is in no way "a lot worse than Wii U" over there. Bandai Namco tried doing a few multi-platform games on Wii U, like Tekken Tag 2, Kamen Rider Battride Wars 2 and One Piece UWR. They sold very little.

Agree that Vita is working quite well in Japan, but unfortunately it's not selling well in the rest of the world.

About Tekken Tag 2, even if that game had a lot of fanservice, it's a late port, probably most of the people who were interested in that game already played it before in other platforms.

For the other two you mentioned, that's clearly Wii U users' fault for not giving them any chance, myself included. I suppose I will buy the One Piece game once I finish watching most of the episodes, I'm still in the 100th...
 

Kid Ying

Member
Wiiu exclusives:
Taiko 1 and 2
tank tank tank
Tekken tag 2

Multiplatform
One piece unlimited red
Gotouchi tetsudou
Kamenbrider battride
Kamen rider summonride
Dotabata party

Last year, banco output rivaled nintendo in number of games. Even though most did bad. Gotouchi and Dotabata may sell outsider the charts, just like tank tank that was a mild success, but one piece, battride and summonride blew (to be fair, with the exception of one piece, both titles sold little everywhere).
 
And the NES, SNES, Gameboy.
Of course. But Namco was also critical over Nintendo's policies, which led to the divide.

By 1989, games for the Nintendo Entertainment System accounted for 40% of Namco's sales. As Nintendo's first licensee, Namco had previously been given privileged terms, such as the right to manufacture their own cartridges. However, upon renewal of the license, these special terms were revoked, prompting Nakamura to publicly criticize Nintendo for monopolistic behavior. In addition, Nakamura announced that Namco would support Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis console, which eventually received most of the better productions the company developed for the home market in the 16-bit era.

They later partnered with Sony to create the System 12 architecture, which led to PlayStation exclusives like Tekken.
 

Malyse

Member
And it culminates with Xenosaga Trilogy HD, followed by Xenosaga 4,5,6 as well as remakes of Xenoblade to fit it more in canon and through a surprise deal with Square, a full on HD remake of Xenogears.


I just want my Kossy amiibo.
 

Scrawnton

Member
If only Nintendo could convince them to bring Tales back... Seriously, Wii U not getting the Symphonia HD collection is insane...
 

Aostia

El Capitan Todd
great topic, as the previous one!
for a Japanese-videogame nostalgic lover as I am, these partnerships and the Tecmo-Koei ones are really good (and speaking about TK in your thread, I'd love to see Ni-Oh somehow resurrected for Wii U)
 

JCX

Member
Whatever it takes to get another Baten Kaitos. More JRPGs need fighting game announcers during battles. All we got is Pokemon Stadium/2 and Baten Kaitos Origins.
 

Scrawnton

Member
Didn't hideo baba say mainline tales game will stay playstation exclusive?

But yeah symphonia hd only on ps3 is crazy

I can foresee a future where the tales series dies out staying console exclusive. Honestly, they need to pull a monster hunter and go strictly handheld.
 

jariw

Member
Nintendo was not ready for HD development, it's pretty clear about that. Namdai was the perfect company to help nintendo out, and I'm sure Nintendo paid well for their services.

Nintendo's first retail releases on the Wii U platform (NSMBU, NintendoLand, Game & Wario, Pikmin 3, Wonderful 101, Super Mario 3D World, Wii Fit U, Tropical Freeze) were co-developed by Bandai Namco?
 

JCX

Member
And here we are: if we can speculate and dream, I'd love a Baten Kaitos with deck management on the gamepad.

That would be ideal. They must have some ideas from the scrapped DS game. Wish I could see what their plans were.

I can foresee a future where the tales series dies out staying console exclusive. Honestly, they need to pull a monster hunter and go strictly handheld.

Tales is the only RPG series I prefer on consoles. HD tales looks so good.
 

Salex_

Member
I can foresee a future where the tales series dies out staying console exclusive. Honestly, they need to pull a monster hunter and go strictly handheld.

Why would they move it to handheld only when it sells less there at a lower price point?
 

Shauni

Member
Here we have Project Treasure which is a F2P loot collecting game of some sort. But the major bit is that this features Monolith's famous leading lady KOS-MOS from the Xenosaga series, and as far as I'm aware, is making her HD debut in this game officially as a playable character.

What's this now?
 

Peltz

Member
i2orDCmCsJNA1.jpg


Very cool looking. I'd love for an opportunity to play that. Any cabs in NYC? I think I saw a commercial last year from D&B that said they had it. Anyone know if that's still the case?
 
More Baten Kaitos! PLEASE more Baten Kaitos! I know it's not likely, but still, please! At least make it a 3DS/handheld project for Monolith Soft. I want more Baten Kaitos!
 

Raitaro

Member
More Baten Kaitos! PLEASE more Baten Kaitos! I know it's not likely, but still, please! At least make it a 3DS/handheld project for Monolith Soft. I want more Baten Kaitos!

I wouldn't mind this either, nor re-releases of the first 2 (which I never got around to playing, admittedly). It seems like a good fit indeed.

Great thread and summary by the way Hero of Legend! I liked your Koei-Tecmo one as well.

I for one can only applaud Nintendo's quite recent tendency to strengthen the bonds with Japanese publishers like these to get more games made/released for Nintendo platforms. My biggest wish, however, is that their use of Mega Man in Smash Bros will also lead to more collaborations with Capcom outside of Monster Hunter. Now that is a company with IP's I'd think Nintendo would make good use of if given the chance.

Speaking of Monster Hunter: it always bugged me that Bandai-Namco apparently thinks the Wii U's audience would not play the Souls games (going by articles like this one from a year ago) while one of it's arguably closest equivalents (i.e. MH - similar focus on community building and slower and difficult but rewarding combat) is pretty much Nintendo exclusive.

Seeing as Nintendo and Bandai-Namco have been so close recently, not releasing at least Dark Souls 2 for Wii U - on two seperate occassions mind you - seems a bit odd and even stubborn. I can't be 100% wrong to think that the audience for both is quite similar and that many Souls fans also like other Japanese Wii U games like Bayonetta 2 and the upcoming Zelda, can I? Apparently I am wrong if we go by Bandai-Namco and their market research...
 

Zee-Row

Banned
i2orDCmCsJNA1.jpg


Very cool looking. I'd love for an opportunity to play that. Any cabs in NYC? I think I saw a commercial last year from D&B that said they had it. Anyone know if that's still the case?

I played Mario Kart GP 2 and I thought it was a horrible game. I hate the items and the carts move like Ridge Racer cars.
 

JB2448

Member
They've aided Nintendo with codeveloping the first HD entries in a couple staple franchises, which almost seems like an extension of their GameCube Star Fox: Assault help more so than anything from the seventh generation with the Wii and any of its titles.

Also, for the sake of your potential "Let's look over Nintendo's relationship with Koei Tecmo" thread, it's Koei Tecmo now, not Tecmo Koei.
 
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