Bandai Namco says M&A boom is impacting its business

pcgamesinsider.biz:

Japanese publishing giant Bandai Namco says that the current glut of mergers and acquisitions is making working with studios more challenging.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, the CEO of the company's European arm Arnaud Muller, said that it was having to find ways to safeguard its business, particularly when it is working on projects where it does not own the IP.

"What I find is that we have to secure the IPs that we create with the studios we partner with," Muller explained.

"When we invest in IP creation, when we invest in marketing for these IPs, we also have to keep in mind that we have to get some sort of security towards the future of the studio that develops this IP, if the IP doesn't belong to us.

"This spread of acquisition that we're seeing is affecting some of the smaller publishers in their capacity to access the best studios in the world. But we at Bandai Namco have the financial means to secure these partnerships. We work on a number of measures to secure those partnerships - you're talking first option rights, you're talking IP ownership, you're talking minority stakes in those studios. So there are ways to secure the relationships."

A period of consolidation has been in effect in the games industry for some years now. This arguably started back in 2018 when Microsoft announced a slew of acquisitions, including Ninja Theory and Playground Games. Since the firm has snapped up ZeniMax Media for a huge $7.5 billion and, of course, the company is in the process of buying Activision Blizzard for a whopping $68.7 billion.