Namco: 09 was an uphill battle

Japanese publisher Namco Bandai has reported a loss of 81.3m for the nine months ending December 31st 2009 – a sharp drop from the 62.3m profit it saw in the same period the year before.

So bad were the results that Namco Bandai has confirmed that it is to shed 630 jobs – or 10 per cent of its total workforce – in an effort to cut costs.

Sales dropped over 10 per cent to 1.9bn while operating income fell to 32.6m – a massive 76 per cent drop.

The Namco Bandai group generally faced an uphill battle in the first nine months of the fiscal year,” a company statement read. During this period the market conditions for the group remained severe, despite steady results achieved in sales of long-established character toys and arcade game machines.

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, leading to weak results for the segment.”