Bandai Namco Announces Declining Financial Results for Games as Armored Core 6 Can't Beat Elden Ring

Bandai Namco announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period between July 1, 2023, and September 30, 2023.

[stanr]

Title is misleading clickbait as its in regard to the Year-over-Year number which saw a small decline when compared to the same time last year.

[Eonjay]

So you are saying the title is correct?

[Quetzll]

The title for sure implies that bandai namco is declining, which would obviously worry the enormous dark souls fanbase, leading to a click that only states the obvious: a single player game isn't going to make as much money as their viral multiplayer game with a viral author's name attached to it.

Big title for a small talk article.

[Eonjay]

I apologize for my confusion here but the title just seems like a 'matter of fact' statement.
@Quetzll you are saying that the title implies that BN is 'declining' but what it really implies is that their revenue declined... which is an undisputed fact. I think the issue here is that people are overreacting. Elden Ring was a big seller. It was such a big seller that you should absolutely expect revenue to decline. This is natural. It doesn't mean BN is 'in danger'. For Souls fans it should mean the opposite because this result should 100% incentivize BN to follow up with another Elden Ring release.

[Obscure_Observer]

"For Souls fans it should mean the opposite because this result should 100% incentivize BN to follow up with another Elden Ring release"

Hidetaka Miyazaki is the master mind behind all those games and he´ll continue to work on whatever game he wants to produce next and BN can´t do anything about it other than develop and publish the game themselves.

[CrimsonWing69]

lol, I said the same thing reading the comment.

[Abriael]

It is entirely correct, but someone seems to be incapable of reading and blame it on the headline 😂

Also lol at -65.2％ in operating income portrayed as "small decline."

Declining financial results doesn't mean the sky is falling. It means declining financial results, which is what it is.

[raWfodog]

Isn’t that what the title said? It mentions ‘Declining financial results’ which is what was talked about in the article. What do you think the title says?

[anast]

AC6 is a solid game and I don't think anyone expected it to beat out ER, even From didn't expect ER to be as big as it is.

[shinoff2183]

I don't know alot of people into armored core , personally for me if they made a mech rpg(front mission) or something I'd be down but I'm not into mech stuff much

[Snookies12]

Yeah, this had no chance of beating Elden Ring. I don't think even From Software expected Elden Ring to do so well. I don't want to call it a freak accident, but I'm not entirely sure why it popped off so much. It's a wonderful game, and I sank like 140+ hours into it. But, it definitely wasn't all that different from previous Souls titles. Despite the open world and mount of course. It was a lot of fun exploring that enormous map though.

[goldwyncq]

Elden Ring released at a time when Soulslike games is already an established subgenre. Being an open world game and having GRRM's name attached to it just added to the hype.

[anast]

RR Martin and the word that it was a bit more friendly. For me, in difficulty, I would rank, Sekiro, the Orphan of Kos, Dark Souls 1, Dark Souls 3, ER, and Demon Souls. Dark Souls 2 doesn't count, it's too mechanically flawed.

[FinalFantasyFanatic]

It's a more niche game, but it's the best selling game in the series, I didn't expect it to beat ER.

[MrWood]

Yeah but I’m sure they will see a big boost again with the ER DLC coming out and hopefully announced next month at The Game Awards. No worries here.

[Abnor_Mal]

Put out Ace Combat8 with all missions playable on PSVR2.

[ApocalypseShadow]

I'd buy it immediately. Hell, put AC and.. AC? Lol. Put both games in VR. I'd buy them.

[shinoff2183]

Let me guess its because Sony had an exclusive with then

[FatalityX77]

Tekken is on the horizon. Profits will go back up. But honestly, armored core is not as big as elden ring or any other souls game. To me, Robots just don't have the same impact as the enemies in souls/bloodborne, elden. Robots feel lifeless. Just my opinion. I never met anyone who said armored core ranks in their top games. I was suprised they made it. It wasn't needed and they could have focused on bloodborne 2, sekiro 2 or anything other than armored. Stupid decision.

[Stanjara]

Bandai was financially solid after Elden Ring and they produced something for the fan base.
I'm glad that they made AC.
We, as gamers, need more of these decisions from publishers so we can have more veriety.

[GoodGuy09]

Well... that's obvious isn't it? Lol

[WolfSeed]

The development time and resources don't even compare. I'd say they did amazing with AC6.

[HyperMoused]

AC came out around Lies of P and Lords....anyone not into mechs would surely go into one of those

[UltimateOwnage]

“Beat”. C‘Mon. Not every game will outsell the last heavy hitter. Elden Ring is a rare case of epic success for an otherwise niche difficulty level of experience.

[Games1st]

Thats too be expected few games can beat it

[jznrpg]

Clearly Armored Core is nowhere near souls games in sales numbers. Still a great game and hope to see Armored Core grow into something bigger

[TheColbertinator]

I'm glad we got at least one more Armored Core game

[Hofstaderman]

With multimillion dollars in development costs and a niche title what were Namco expecting? The sad part of this is that due to the high cost of game development less developers have an appetite to make games like these anymore. I really miss the ps1 and ps2 era where where saw alot more of niche genre titles and new IPs.

[BlaqMagiq1]

I mean AC just came back from the dead after a decade. NO ONE should've expected it to beat Elden Ring. Having said all of that, it's the sleeper hit of 2023 along with Lies of P.