Bandai Namco Entertainment

Overview

Bandai Namco Entertainment, is a Japanese company. On September 29, 2005, Namco officially merged with Japanese toymaker Bandai to form Namco Bandai Holdings Inc., one of the largest entertainment companies in Japan. Namco became a wholly owned subsidiary of the holding company. Then on March 31, 2006, Namco merged with Bandai's video game operations and the US arm of the company was renamed Namco Bandai Games Inc. Meanwhile, the Japanese arm went by Bandai Namco Games, to take advantage of Bandai's larger Japanese precense while capitalizing on the still-recognizable Namco name in the United States. In 2014, the US arm was renamed to Bandai Namco Games America Inc, unifying the names across regions. Bandai Namco Games announced in December 2014 that it would rename itself again and thus would known globally as Bandai Namco Entertainment starting April 1, 2015.

Some of the company's most famous games are Pac-Man and the Tekken franchise. They also own a patent to make minigames during loading screens.

History

Bandai, before merging with Namco, had previously attempted to release its own video game console devices. In 1995 Bandai released the Pippin with Apple in Japan, and released in the USA in 1996. Bandai did have better succes with the WonderSwan handheld game system in Japan in 1999. A year later the company released the WonderSwan Color. Both portables saw support from Bandai itself and even from other third party software vendors such as Square, Capcom and Taito, but ultimately the WonderSwan was defeated in the market by the Game Boy and the Neo Geo Pocket.