Bandai Namco Studios: History and Key Facts

Bandai Namco Studios Inc. (BNSI) is a Japanese video game developer headquartered in Kōtō, Tokyo with studios in Malaysia. Founded in 2012 as Namco Bandai Studios, it is a subsidiary and development arm of publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment (formerly Bandai Namco Games), which itself is part of the wider Bandai Namco Holdings group. The company works under its parent company as a keiretsu; Bandai Namco Studios creates video games for home, arcade, and mobile platforms, while Bandai Namco Entertainment handles the distribution, marketing, and publishing of these products.

The studio was established as a spin-off company of Namco Bandai Games's video game development divisions, based on restructuring efforts and the need for a decrease in development times and increase in productivity. Over 1,000 staff from Namco Bandai Games and additional from the defunct Namco Tales Studio division were absorbed into BNS. Bandai Namco Studios has worked on many successful video game franchises, including Tekken, Pac-Man, The Idolmaster, Ace Combat, Tales, and Soulcalibur, in addition to original intellectual properties such as Code Vein and Scarlet Nexus. Much like Namco developed games with Nintendo as the publisher since the GameCube, the company has also developed several games for them as Bandai Namco Studios, namely the Super Smash Bros. series beginning with the fourth installment, Wii Sports Club, Kirby Air Riders, and spin-offs in the Pokémon franchise like Pokkén Tournament and New Pokémon Snap. The company is a strong advocate of video game preservation, preserving key art, design documents, and other resources for its games.

Source and attribution

Text excerpted from Bandai Namco Studios by Wikipedia contributors, available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. The extract is abridged and formatting has been adjusted; the adapted text on this page is shared under the same licence. Revision history.