Dark Souls sales help drive Namco Bandai profits

Strong sales of retail games including Dark Souls and Ace Combat Assault Horizon during the last fiscal year helped drive Tokyo-based Namco Bandai to a rise in revenues and profits for the full fiscal year. As part of its financial highlights report for the last fiscal year, the company revealed that Dark Souls sold 1.19 million units in the U.S. and Europe (developer From Software self-published the game in Japan, where the game had sold 340,000 as of October 2011), while Ace Combat Assault Horizon sold 1.07 million units worldwide. Soul Calibur V sold 690,000 units across Japan and Europe combined. A number of the publisher's Japan-only releases also saw notable sales. One Piece "Kaizoku Musou" for PlayStation 3 sold 940,000 copies, while Tales of Xillia sold 770,000 units. Overall, the company sold 23.33 million software units worldwide during the full fiscal year. 8.48 million units sold were for PlayStation 3, 4.19 million were for PSP, and 3.18 million were for Xbox 360. It saw unit sales of less than 3 million on each of the other consoles, including the Nintendo 3DS, on which the company saw sales of 1.77 million units. Japan was the strongest region for the company, with 11.51 million units sold, while 5.94 million units were sold in the U.S. and 5.88 million were sold in Europe. Elsewhere in the report, Namco Bandai's mobile game division saw a decrease in paid subscribers during the last fiscal year, down to 2.15 million subscribers compared to 3.34 million subscribers in the previous year, although revenue from mobile titles increased overall. Also in the Content Business sector, Namco Bandai's arcade game machine division grew in revenue to 73.4 billion yen ($919.2 million) from 56.0 billion yen ($701.3 million) year-over-year, thanks to increased sales for all types of machines apart from smaller-sized video game machines. For the fiscal year ended March 31, 2012, Namco Bandai's Content division saw revenues of 225.5 billion yen ($2.8 billion), up 25.3 percent compared to 180.0 billion yen ($2.3 billion) year-over-year. Overall, the company reported revenues of 454.2 billion yen ($5.7 billion), up 15.2 percent compared to 394.2 billion yen ($4.9 billion) year-over-year, and profits of 19.3 billion yen ($241.7 million), up a notable 944.3 percent compared to last year's 1.8 billion yen ($23.1 million). Looking to the current fiscal year, Namco Bandai estimates revenues of 440.0 billion yen ($5.5 billion), down 3.1 percent year-over-year, and profits of 17.5 billion yen ($219.2 million), down 9.3 percent year-over-year.