Bandai Namco, the Japanese video game publishing giant, has now revealed that it is working on a new development project, one that could see characters and settings from Dark Souls, Dragon Ball Z, and Elden Ring all collide in the metaverse, in a bid to allow fans to interact across its different IPs through a shared interface. The Tokyo-based publisher has stated that it will invest $130 million (roughly Rs. 980 crores) on the project, labeled “IP Metaverse”, as part of the company’s new mid-term plan, which outlines its three-year vision.
Bandai Namco made the announcement as part of its newly released mid-term plan spanning April 2022 to March 2025 with a document that draws an initial outline for what it’s calling its new “IP axis strategy” among other plans, including a new speech-bubble-inspired logo.
While the document doesn’t single out any specific IP for the metaverse plan yet, Bandai Namco has a wide range of potential candidates, including Dark Souls, the upcoming Elden Ring, the Dark Pictures Anthology, Soul Calibur, Pac-Man and other arcade classics, in addition to a number of licensed manga and anime games.
This project hopes to be a “new framework for connecting with fans” as well as “maximize IP value over the medium to long term” with the money going into “data foundation” and the “development of content.”
It is also worth noting that Bandai Namco holds the video game publishing license for many non-video game IPs but does not own the IP itself. It is not certain that any of these licenses extend outside the specific games published by Bandai Namco or whether the development of an “IP metaverse” even falls under the category of a video game. Until further details of the publisher’s project are chalked off, there’s no way to be sure just yet.
