Video game sales on the up at Bandai Namco as profits falter

Bandai Namco is the latest game company to release its financials for the year ended March 31, 2016, and it's a mixed bag for the Japanese publisher.

Company-wide sales saw a marginal boost, increasing by 1.8 percent year-over-year to 575.5 billion yen ($5.3 billion). Overall profits, however, fell to 34.5 billion ($317.7 million) from 37.6 billion yen ($346.2 million) -- an annual slide of 8 percent. 

It was a different story for the publisher's home video game software business, with year-over-year video game revenue rising to 95.7 billion yen ($881.3 million) from 86.5 billion yen ($796.5 million).

In terms of total game sales, 26.68 million units were sold worldwide during the financial year, with 13.27 million of those sales coming from Europe -- where Bandai Namco published The Witcher 3. 

As for the company's performance in the U.S. and Japan, sales in those regions totaled 8.71 million units and 4.69 million units respectively. 

Based on its showing this year, Bandai Namco is forecasting sales of 580 billion yen ($5.34 billion), and profits of 35 billion yen ($322.3 million) for the finanical year ending March 31, 2017. 

Video game sales are expected to rise slightly to 26.7 billion over the same period.