Bandai Namco Wants To Be "Platform Agnostic" As Industry Consolidates

thegamer.com:

Elden Ring was a huge success for FromSoftware and its publisher Bandai Namco. In fact it is Bandai Namco's fastest-selling game of all time and has reached 16.6 million units sold globally as of June. It has bested the likes of FIFA 22 and Pokemon Legends: Arceus in sales across Europe, while Bandai Namco Europe CEO Arnaud Muller is happy with the game's success, which has tipped the Souls genre firmly into the mainstream.

However, in an interview with GamesIndustry, the CEO did point out that Elden Ring wasn't the Japanese publisher's first global success, referencing the international popularity the Tekken series. But Elden Ring was a new series and the publisher has a strategy to introduce new IP for its games.

Related: Microsoft Buying Activision Blizzard Is Bad

"Dark Souls has always been perceived as a difficult [series] and Elden Ring is a difficult game but I think with the work we've done to explain properly to our fans the way they could discover this adventure, this new game has touched a larger audience and has made it more accessible," Muller told GamesIndustry. "It's a combination of the type of game it is and the positioning of it. And I think it worked very well."

Bandai Namco has had the ambition to have half of its games be new IP for several years. However, as the trend in the games industry has been growing towards acquisitions, this can make it hard for the Japanese publisher to find triple-A partners. Examples include when Little Nightmares developer Tarsier Studios was bought out by Embracer Group in 2019, and its partnership with Supermassive, who make the Dark Pictures Anthology series, which was acquired by Nordisk earlier this year. However, Muller said Supermassive's buyout doesn't affect