Officials from Namco Bandai have announced that the company has been forced to cut its full year profit forecast by 38 percent to ¥16.5 billion ($155.4m), blaming the success of the Wii for continued problems with its arcade business.
The company has revealed that it is to close between 50 and 60 of its amusement arcades because of declining profits, roughly 20 percent of its total operations. Although the arcade business has been in decline for decades worldwide Namco has blamed the sudden rapid decrease in business on the Wii, as well as rising oil prices.
"A lot of the types of games that people played at an arcade can now be done at home,"
said spokesman Yuji Machida in a Reuters report. “Many Japanese kids got a Wii last year, particularly over the holiday season, and it seems as if much of their pocket money is now being saved to buy more hardware or software for the console.”
Coin-op machine manufacture and the running of amusement arcades continues to be a significant part of many major Japanese publishers’ businesses. However, with the fall in custom Sega Sammy Holdings recently announced plans to close around 100 of its arcades, while yesterday Capcom revealed that its own arcade business had adversely impacted its most
recent financial results.
