March 2nd, 2009 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Companies & M&A | 1 Comment »
Namco Bandai Networks has started to ramp up their European mobile games business over the past few months. With main competitors shrinking or leaving the market, the timing is just right for the Japanese games publisher.
Various people in the industry where rumouring this step from Namco for a few months already, but President Barry O'Neil finally opened up their plans over at PG.biz.
According to Barry, the company is pretty busy to build up operator relationships and to revitalize the D2C market. Another big issue they want to solve in short term is handset support. Though porting in the US and Asia was clearly in order, EU devices still needed a lot of attention.
According to Barry, operators are facing some problems for the future. Revenues decline as the iPhone is offering a great gaming experience in a closed shop environment and choice of games is pretty much limited to the big three.
As for the portfolio, the company will lean a lot on their evergreens like Pac-Man and Katamari, but also introduce more local games to certain European markets.
Namco has to acquire someone. Europe is different! Pac-Man is not a Tetris. If they want to stop the big 2 or 3 they need to put money on the table.