Bandai Namco Had A Pretty Great 2020, Revenue Reached $6.8 billion

Thanks to the perfect storm of a global pandemic and an entertainment-starved population turning to video games to help stave off lockdown boredom, video game publishers have reported record earnings for the financial year ending on March 31, 2021. According to its latest financial results, publisher Bandai Namco was among these, recently seeing a healthy 2.3% increase in sales year-on-year, earning $6.8 billion overall.

Operating profit grew by 7.5% to $777 million when compared to the previous fiscal year, with video game sales earning $1.07 billion for the company. That made for a healthy 19.2% increase year-on-year compared to the previous year, although it's worth noting that net sales across all departments came from Bandai Namco's home ground of Japan and accounted for 77.6% of total sales.

As for how those games sold, Bandai Namco sold 41.4 million copies across 51 games globally. According to GamesIndustry.Biz, that broke down to 3.4 million copies across 44 games sold in Japan, 16.2 million units sold in the Americas across 25 games, and 21.7 million copies shifted across Europe across 34 games.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, visual and music production sales were down 40% while amusement segments saw a drop of 30%, leading to a closure of 44 of Bandai Namco's amusement facilities across the world.

Bandai Namco expects the 2021 fiscal year to see a 64.1% drop in revenue to $385 million, which will in turn result in a 70.9% decrease in profit to $293 million. This is predicted to come when the pandemic starts to subside, as more countries vaccinate their populations.

This week has seen plenty of other gaming publishers post their latest financial earnings, with Control developer Remedy Entertainment posting revenue of of €8.1. million, EA having its best year ever, and Assassin's Creed Valhalla helped Ubisoft surge to a record 39.4% increase in profit when compared to the previous year.