Namco, Bandai North American integration complete

The integration between Namco Hometek and Bandai Games has completed on schedule, creating a new subsidiary which will operate as Namco Bandai Games America.

Effective immediately, newly formed parent company Namco Bandai Holdings (USA) owns all of the Bandai Namco Group subsidiaries in the US, encompassing toys, DVD and visual entertainment, arcade machines, arcade facilities, mobile and traditional videogame sectors.

Genichi Ito, the newly appointed president and CEO of Namco Bandai Games America, stated: "We are thrilled that the integration of the two North American entities is now complete and we are all now under one roof. We are proud to be part of the new Namco Bandai Games America family and look forward to a successful year ahead."

The US integration forms part of merger between the two Japanese firms, following an initial agreement reached in May 2005. Namco Bandai Holdings will reorganise all subsidiaries and operations into six sectors: amusement facilities, network content, movie and audio content, toy and hobby, game content and affiliated business.

The combining of the two dedicated games divisions has resulted in the creation of Bandai Namco Games as a separate subsidiary, consisting of some 1,300 Namco developers and 60 Bandai developers. The two companies are responsible for some of the most widely recognised videogame and toy franchises, including Tekken, Power Rangers, Soul Calibur, Pac-Man, Tamagotchi and Digimon.

"The integration of our two companies has been a team effort over the last several months," said Naruo Uchida, corporate planning senior vice president, Namco Bandai Games America. "We have worked together to fuse the many strengths each of our companies have to form one strong North American operation."

For the fiscal period ending March 31, 2006, the two companies have forecast revenue of 474 billion Yen (EURO 3.5 billion) and a profit of 24.4 billion yen (EURO 180 million). Revenue for the business year ending March 31, 2008, is targeted at 550 billion yen (EURO 4.1 billion).