Namco Bandai Fires Around 630 of Its Employees

While most of the financial shock that the gaming industry suffered came to an end along with 2009, at least one major company in the business is still trying to patch its gashing wounds. Edge Online reports that Namco Bandai is facing serious financial difficulties and is forced to take severe actions. And, as always, the first place a company chooses to trim down is its workforce, much like EA did last year.

During a nine-month period that ended on December 31, the publisher lost around 11.7 billion yen, which amounts to around $129 million, as opposed to the same period last year when it made a nine-billion-yen profit, or $99 million. The company's net sales dropped by 10.4 percent to 282 billion yen or $3.11 billion, and its operating income also sank down by 76.3 percent down to 4.7 billion yen, or $51.8 million.

The company cited as a main cause for its losses the general state of the market, stating that, “The Bandai Namco group generally faced an uphill battle in the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2010, during which market conditions for the group remained severe, despite steady results achieved in sales of long-established character toys in the Toys and Hobby business and arcade game machines in the Game Contents business.”

Namco Bandai further added that, “In the Game Contents business in particular, sales fell below projections given weak market conditions for most of major home game software titles except Tekken 6, the largest title released in the current fiscal year, leading to weak results for the segment.”

With these new financial reports, the company has also changed its full-year predictions, now expecting a 31-billion-yen, or $341-million loss, compared with the 8.5-billion-yen, or $93.8-million profit it previously did. Predicted sales also dropped to 380 billion yen, or $4.2 billion from its original 400 billion yen or $4.4 billion. And as part of the company's plan to get back on its feet, around 630 Namco Bandai employees will be fired. Representing approximately ten percent of the company's workforce, the cut is part of the publisher's “group restart plan.”