Discussion How does Bamco's dev structure work?

[ItWasMeantToBe19]

While other publishers give more defined dev teams, Bamco's structure seems fairly obscure. They're currently working on:

Various One Piece games
Various Dragonball games
Other anime titles
Blue Protocol (contract work for Amazon)
A remastered title for Nintendo (contract work for Nintendo)
Ace Combat next (in partnership with ILCA)
Tekken 8
Tales of Arise sequel I would guess?
Code Vein sequel I would guess?

And are publishing various other games (such as Sand Land and Armored Core)

But it's hard to find the amount of staff crossover between like Tales of Arise, Code Vein, Tekken, etc. Is there a dev team breakdown anywhere and who has worked on which project in which capacity?

 

[Shiba]

iirc most if not all of their anime projects are external developed, while their original IPs are general made by their internal teams. Ace Combat’s dev team is call Projects Aces, I believe the Tales team has a name as well.

 

[BGBW]

Pretty obvious, much like many of their mobile games, it's gacha based.

They turned up to the office, draw a lot and depending on the result that's the game they're working on that day.

I heard working on iDOLM@STER is the equivalent of drawing an SSR.

 

[Apopheniac]

MobyGames can be useful for finding out information like this, though not every game has credits listed, and it doesn't discriminate between development and production roles. On the credits page for a game, the bottom of the page lists which games shared the most development staff.

BANDAI NAMCO Studios Inc. games - MobyGames

List of games released by BANDAI NAMCO Studios Inc.

www.mobygames.com

 

[Apopheniac]

I know this isn't too helpful, Bandai Namco has an interview series with employees on their website, and the more recent interviews list the employees' department by studio #/group#/production #. There aren't a lot of credits to match these to known development teams, though. The closest commonality I could find was that Studio 2 Group 2's staff has done contract work for Nintendo (Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart, maybe Go Vacation also counts), but it's not a lot to go on.

クリエイターインタビュー | Bandai Namco Studios Inc.

www.bandainamcostudios.com

Smash Bros. shares a decent amount of staff with Mario Party Superstars, so there might be some credence to a Nintendo contract dev group there, maybe that would also include Wii Sports Club. A number of Smash Bros. devs went on to do Scarlet Nexus, so Studio 2 might include their JRPG teams (God Eater/Code Vein, Tales) under a different group?

 

[ILikeFeet]

While other publishers give more defined dev teams, Bamco's structure seems fairly obscure. They're currently working on:

Various One Piece games
Various Dragonball games
Other anime titles
Blue Protocol (contract work for Amazon)
A remastered title for Nintendo (contract work for Nintendo)
Ace Combat next (in partnership with ILCA)
Tekken 8
Tales of Arise sequel I would guess?
Code Vein sequel I would guess?

And are publishing various other games (such as Sand Land and Armored Core)

But it's hard to find the amount of staff crossover between like Tales of Arise, Code Vein, Tekken, etc. Is there a dev team breakdown anywhere and who has worked on which project in which capacity?

One Piece - external
DBZ - external
Blue Protocol - internal. Amazon does nothing but publish in the west
Nintendo game - we don't know who's making this
Ace Combat - co-production with ILCA
Tekken - internal
Tales - internal
Code Vein - external but dead

Their games are mostly externally made. For internal games, BN just has a lot of staff, not just in Japan but elsewhere like in SEA region

 

[astrogamer]

An important thing to remember is that the company is Bandai + Namco. Everything that's licensed is largely external. I believe the longrunning licensed series (Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto) get a dedicate production team but, those supervise the product, not make it. The Gundam side is also largely external with a few exceptions like some of the Gundam Vs games and Gundam Evolution is by BN Online (the team that now works on Blue Protocol).
The Namco side is where most of the internal team is on. The earlier division between the teams was stuff like Project Aces, Tales Studio, the Tekken team and Project Soul plus the original Arcade teams. It's hard to get a precise wrapping on how splits further on like God Eater comes from spinning off Tales, which leads to Code Vein but there's Scarlet Nexus which also spinned off from Tales. In most cases, most original stuff still has an outside partner dev. God Eater has Shift and then Marvelous, Scarlet Nexus has Tose, Ace Combat had Access Games and then switched to ILCA, Tales has Tri-Crescendo, and Soulcalibur VI has Dimps. Most of the PS2 remasters seem to be with Monkeycraft. The exceptions seem to be New Pokemon Snap and Tekken which have only light outsourcing
The Smash team is a tad confusing because they grabbed staff from across Bandai Namco. Project Soul, Tales Studio, Go Vacation, Project Aces and the allsorts. The biggest leaning seems to be from Tales and Soulcalibur, which has most of the Tales guys work on Scarlet Nexus and the Soul Calibur guys move between Tekken and Pokken.
Then there is Bandai Namco Amusement, which is where the current Arcade division mostly resides. This side makes Taiko, Ace Angler and most of the arcade games.