Bandai Namco Intentions to Develop 'Metaverse' Gundam
Japanese video game and toy company Bandai Namco spent 15 billion yen or equivalent to Rp. 1.8 trillion to develop its flagship Metaverse franchise Gundam.
In fact, they announced this move last February when their business began to shift from a car maker to a virtual platform to increase revenue, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Quoted from the official website, the complete world called “Mobile Suit Gundam Metaverse” is set to combine games, videos, live music, and other content.
Metaverse Gundam will also link to physical sites operated by the Bandai Namco group of companies such as game arcades and plastic model shops.
A concept video shows avatars of users enjoying concerts, communicating with each other via automatic translation and purchasing plastic Gundam models to send to their actual homes.
Since debuting as a television series in Japan for more than four decades, Gundam’s tale of space robot swordfighting has captivated a new generation of fans around the world.
“The Gundam Metaverse will be a mechanism for us to connect more deeply with fans,” said Bandai Namco President Masaru Kawaguchi.
Bandai Namco Entertainment (BNE), which is in charge of the group’s digital business, will run the metaverse project. This unit has pushed to improve computer graphics technology and data analysis when developing video games.
The company has been promoting its business in the virtual space. BNE invested in US avatar creation startup Genies in 2022 to learn about space, as well as producing a series of non-exchangeable tokens from the popular game character Pac-Man in 2022.
Bandai Namco has not provided a specific estimate of how far it expects the metaverse project to increase subscriber numbers or increase the average revenue per user in its Gundam franchise.
This is because Metaverse only started contributing to Bandai Namco’s revenue in the 2025 fiscal year.
The 15 billion yen metaverse gundam investment will also include the creation of a database to consolidate Bandai Namco group customer data.