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Bandai Namco Entertainment announced the creation of a new Barcelona-based company dedicated to mobile gaming on Wednesday. The company, named Bandai Namco Mobile, will unify the development and marketing of mobile entertainment outside the Asian market.
As part of Bandai Namco’s Network Entertainment (BNE) Unit, the new company will allow for “more flexible and collaborative content creation and marketing activities” for western audiences.
“Setting up a separate company for all our western mobile development and marketing allows us to react better to market tendencies and create higher quality content at a faster pace, as part of our long term vision for the business,” CEO Naoki Katashima said in a statement.
Katashima, who also serves as CEO of Bandai Namco Entertainment’s European and American businesses, will help lead the new company alongside COO Tatsuya Kubota.
Kubota added, “The choice to settle in Barcelona was not a difficult one. The city is not only one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it’s also the hotbed for international video game development and home to the best talent the mobile industry has to offer.”
The news comes several months after Bandai Namco announced the closure of its Vancouver-based mobile game studio via Twitter in November. It developed smartphone games based on Bandai Namco’s top franchises, including Tekken Mobile, Tap My Katamari, Pac-Man Bounce, and Pac-Man 256.
Bandai Namco Entertainment specializes in creating video games for multiple platforms and is wholly owned by Bandai Namco Holdings (TYO: 7832), which also makes toys, animated TV shows, arcade machines and more. Bandai Namco is currently one of the largest toy companies in the world, second only to Lego. It’s top video game franchises include Pac-Man, Tekken, SoulCalibur, and Dark Souls. More recent franchise games are Little Nightmares and The Dark Pictures Anthology.
Bandai Namco Mobile is expected to open in 2020 and recruitment will begin in the coming months.
