Namco Bandai has announced its focus to shift development of new titles back to Japan, after its recent attempt at developing titles in the west proved unprofitable.
“We found the quality and development speed of titles made for us by the overseas studios to be lacking,” Namco Bandai President Shukuo Ishikawa said in an interview with Bloomberg in Tokyo yesterday. “Foreign studios can still propose and develop games, but our Japanese staff will control the process more closely.”
Enslaved: Odyssey to the West is a good example in this situation. The game, although it received fantastic reviews, only sold an approximate of 335,000 units worldwide. The company’s expectations for the Ninja Theory-developed game were much higher.
Namco Bandai earns more than 70 percent of its revenue in Japan, and wants to increase western sales to half of its total by March 31, 2016.
Let’s start by localizing Tales of Vesperia (PS3), Tales of Graces F, and Tales of Xillia, then, eh?