Last month DeNA and Bandai Namco announced a social gaming joint venture called BDNA, which will be set up on October 3 in Tokyo. To recap, BDNA will be capitalized with 100 million yen (US$1.3 million), 75% owned by Bandai Namco, and led by a mixed team of Bandai Namco and DeNA executives.
At the Tokyo Game Show 2011, DeNA president Isao Moriyasu took the stage with Bandai Namco president Shin Unozawa and explained BDNA in more detail (and also unveiled the logo that you can see above).
Here are the key points the two executives made:
- the companies got close in July last year when Bandai Namco started distributing games on Mobage
- Unozawa was surprised by the power of social gaming after he saw Gundam Royale racking up 1 million players in just 6 days last December (they are at 3 million now)
- two new BDNA games were announced for Mobage this fall: Gundam Card Collection and Tamagochi
- apart from Gundam and Tamagochi, Bandai will also turn anime series Macross into a social game on Mobage
- the two companies see plenty of synergies for BDNA: Bandai contributes console game know-how and famous “characters”, while DeNA offers a platform with millions of users and social gaming and monetization know-how
- BDNA will offer social games on smartphones both in and outside Japan
What was missing was a comment on Bandai Namco’s future strategy regarding GREE: the company is currently offering Gundam Masters and Kamen Rider Wars (both are social “hero” RPGs) – exclusively – on GREE for feature phones.
Bandai Namco actually announced Super Sentai– and Ultraman-based social games for GREE in July, but I am thinking GREE won’t see any Bandai Namco-branded games after that anymore.
