Namco Bandai Speculation

 It was only a few years ago Namco Bandai was just Namco. Just like Square and Enix were separate. I believe the companies have joined for no reason. I believe poor communication between it's different divisions of anime, video games and merchandise have weakened the company. Instead of those divisions working together to make let's say a video game that can have merchandise and a cartoon to promote itself like Pokemon does, each division does whatever it wants. This is all really speculation, but some strange news has happened recently, I read from Kotaku. The creator of Katmari felt like an outsider while working there and on a much worse note the company has gotten rid of it's American game makers sacking 90 employees. All games will come from Japan now or mostly from Japan. That's not really bad communication, just overall sucking.

Update: Okay this was another poor decision. Bandai Namco, put up a Mr. Driller Chillean Miner image on their Japanese site. I get the connection, but that doesn't really need to be put up. I'd understand if 4 chan did it, but not the company that owns Mr.Driller. They have since taken it down.

I think my point isn't coming off very clear. It's kind of like this. I read Capcom Unity. Sometimes Capcom Unity is amazed to find Capcom products from Japan they don't know about.  Let's say like a Phoenix Wright tie. Now apparently Capcom America seems to have no idea about that tie. This is most likely because it was a Japan only made item. You would think, however that there would be some sort of international database for Capcom listing all it's products or someone in charge of it that who could expedite that info. There isn't. So Capcom America has to take time to get the Phoenix Wright tie to America because they had no idea it existed. This is due to poor communication between Capcom of North America and Capcom Japan.

It's kind of funny they have localization teams for games, but not for merchandise it seems. Oh that was it. Bandai Entertainment of America and Namco Bandai had poor communication. I remember I wrote to one of them and they said they had no idea what the other was doing. If you think about that it's incredibly stupid. You might want to do cross promotion within the company. Or not release something on the same day. Or a thousand other things that might help the company as a whole.

 Bandai Namco America and Bandai Entertainmet doesn't really come up with the products that are produced,(well know more than ever) but are mostly a division to get it made and produced here in America. So cross-promotion and working together might not help as much, but the head offices in Japan should.

Anyway on to games.Some fun games coming out. Some not so fun. I got to attend a press event, about a month ago for the new Namco games approaching. I kind of wonder if some of the people I met are fired.

Pac-man Party was fun if not insane. The redesign as I stated earlier makes the character look like they all had bad haircuts. Maybe, just the ghosts got bad haircuts, you also have the introduction of new charcacter just for this game. I don't know why they couldn't just add The Prince from Katamari or other Namco mascots. BTW he isn't unlockable. The mini-games are fun a innovative. You usually don't hunt cookies at night or throw giant skewers at meat. I hope you don't.

The new Time Crisis was okay. Felt like a fun shooter to play with a friend. I only played the pirate levels. The playstaion move was quite accurate when I played.

 I hate Kinect, I hate Kinect more when it's a boring learning game. Dr. Kawashima of Brain Age fame has a kinect game coimg out and it's just doesn't work. I wouldn't play it even if the Kinect did work. He does have a light bullb assiting him named Watson which was funny. But, funny don't sell me on this game.

Finally, the big guns come out. Antiques Road Show the video game. This games back story is so funny I wish it were a made for tv movie. Your a school teacher with some free time so you of course start working for a weird old man finding antiques. When you look for antiques it seems your breaking and entering people's houses. Then a mystery unfolds. Also character likeness of the real cast was not given, huzzah.


All I can say is this Pac-Man looks cool


and I'll ask if any version of Taiko drum master is coming to America.