Namco half-year profits up 180 per cent
Japanese publisher Namco has reported significantly improved earnings for the first half of its fiscal year, with sales up almost 14 per cent and profits up over 180 per cent thanks to the success of several key titles.
Japanese publisher Namco has reported significantly improved earnings for the first half of its fiscal year, with sales up almost 14 per cent and profits up over 180 per cent thanks to the success of several key titles.
Namco reported a final earnings figure of 3.7 billion Yen (â'¬28.5 million) on sales of 83.6 billion Yen (â'¬643.8 billion), and projects earnings of 6.6 billion Yen (â'¬50.8 million) on sales of 174.6 billion Yen (â'¬1.4 billion) for the full year through to March.
The main game named as driving Namco's earnings was, unsurprisingly, Soul Calibur II - which achieved sales success in every major territory around the globe, although perhaps surprisingly for a multi-platform title, is generally thought to have racked up most of that success on the GameCube.
Rather more localised success was racked up by Taiko no Tatsujin (Drum Expert), a rhythm action title which uses a proprietary drum kit controller and has proved a huge draw for Japanese gamers, with each successive iteration of the game doing well in the charts - right up to the most recent release, 3rd Generation, which topped the charts earlier this month.
Namco joins a host of Japanese publishers which have announced very positive results for the first half of the year - with Konami, Sega, Capcom and Tecmo all reporting excellent figures in the past few weeks. The only stand-out deviation from this success is Nintendo, which reported its first-ever interim loss last week as its overseas holdings were devalued by the weak dollar.