Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero! publisher announces game cancellations despite recent success
OCTOBER has been full of major releases, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has been one of the biggest successes.
Dragon Ball rubbed shoulders with big hitters like Metaphor: ReFantazio and Silent Hill 2, both of which sold over a million copies within a few days of launch.
Despite this, Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero has reportedly sold over 3million copies in the first 24 hours.
It appears that publisher Bandai Namco is having a great year, with other hits like Tekken 8 and Sand Land.
According to a new report by Bloomberg, Bandai Namco is cutting its workforce and cancelling several titles, despite its recent success.
The report states that in April Bandai Namco moved 200 of its 1.3k staff members to separate rooms without work to do.
In Japan, it is unusual for employees to be fired, and instead companies often wait for people to resign.
The country has very strict labour protection laws, meaning that it is very difficult to fire a member of staff.
The report states that 100 people have already resigned and that more are expected to follow in the coming months.
Bandai Namco has denied using ‘oidashibeya’ (separate rooms) to encourage its employees to resign.
However, it has confirmed that some games at the publisher were cancelled.
A representative for the company said: “Our decisions to discontinue games are based on comprehensive assessments of the situation.
“Some employees may need to wait a certain amount of time before they are assigned their next project, but we do move forward with assignments as new projects emerge.
“There is no organisation like an ‘oidashi beya’ at Bandai Namco Studios designed to pressure people to leave voluntarily.”
If the Bloomberg report is correct, then the video game projects were cancelled before the huge success of Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero.
However, the resignations and cancellations would have occurred after the successful launch of Tekken 8 in January 2024.
There has been a huge number of game cancellations over the past few years following global lockdowns.
During the pandemic, many people turned to video games for entertainment as they were spending more time at home.
Video games sales soared during this period, and then slumped again as lockdown restrictions were lifted.
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