As extra builders and publishers turn into acquired, or are open to being acquired, Bandai Namco Europe COO Arnaud Muller touched on the difficulties of working on this period of recreation improvement.
Speaking with GamesIndustry, Muller admitted that the Scarlet Nexus and Dragon Ball: The Breakers writer has needed to implement safeguards with third-party builders, particularly ones already owned by totally different publishers.
“Safeguards,” on this case, means securing relationships with the builders, discussing who in the end owns the IP, and even probably investing a minority stake right into a studio.
The third-party studios that Bandai Namco works with, resembling Dark Souls developer From Software, it very a lot needs to maintain working with going ahead. “We additionally should remember that now we have to get some kind of safety in direction of the way forward for the studio that develops this IP, if the IP does not belong to us,” mentioned Muller.
As an instance, he pointed at developer Supermassive Games. Bandai Namco publishes the studio’s Dark Pictures anthology collection, and Supermassive was bought by Danish funding agency Nordisk again in July.
Even although Supermassive outright owns the Dark Pictures IP, Muller confirmed that the connection between the developer and writer hasn’t modified, Nordisk does not publish video games. In truth, Supermassive’s latest recreation, The Quarry, was revealed by 2K.
While admitting that Bandai Namco has the cash to maintain these relationships, Muller additionally briefly touched on the flip facet of the acquisition glut. Namely, that not everybody could be a Bandai Namco.
“This unfold of acquisition that we’re seeing is affecting a number of the smaller publishers of their capability to entry the most effective studios on the earth,” admitted Muller. But so far as what smaller publishers might do because the mergers and acquisitions proceed, he had no reply.
Update: A earlier model of this text acknowledged that Blazblu was a Bandai Namco-published recreation. It has been up to date to appropriate the error.
