Namco reports sales lift, drop in losses

Namco Bandai his filed it financial report for the quarter ending June 30th 2010, brining with it net sales reached YEN 81,912m, an increase of 8.2 per cent over the YEN 75,729m seen in the same period a year before.

Operating income was up from YEN 2,758m last year to YEN 2,953m. Losses were also down, dropping from YEN 2,846m to YEN 1,644m.

Sales at Namco Bandai’s Content division, which includes its video games operations, jumped from YEN 20,210m to YEN 32,948m. Losses at the Content division dropped from YEN 4,136m to YEN 619m.

Video games software revenues reached YEN 115bn, up from YEN 79bn last year.

Sales grew in every territory, with Japan remaining by far the most lucrative region for the company and America maintaining its narrow lead over Europe.

In total the Namco Bandai sold 2.174m home console games in the period and 979k handheld software units, meaning a grand total of 3.153m units. In Japan, however, the company enjoyed 633m handheld unit sales in the period compared to 318m home console games.

PS3 was its most lucrative platform with 696k unit sales. This was followed by DS (636k) and Xbox 360 (581k). Amazingly, the PS2 (474k) bettered the Wii (423k) and the PSP (343k).

Tekken 6 was the most successful individual game with 1.07m unit sales. DS title Taiko Drum Master was up next (170k) followed by Ben10 Alien Force 2 (110k) and Super Robot Wars (110k).

Mobile Suit Gundam still stands as Namco Bandai’s leading brand, with Power Rangers overtaking Masked Ranger to claim second spot. Sales of both Ben10 and Dragon Ball fell year-on-year.